'Boy and the World': EW review

Like Inside Out, its fellow nominee in the Best Animated Feature category at this year’s Oscars, Brazil’s Boy and the World puts us inside the mind of a child trying to make sense of his surroundings. Beyond that, the two films couldn’t be more different. Pulsing with a vibrant samba/hip-hop soundtrack and the pastel palette of a tropical fruit salad, director Alê Abreu’s lovely dreamlike fantasia revolves around the pint-size Cuca, whose father leaves their rural home for the big city to find work. Heartbroken, Cuca follows him, embarking on a strange odyssey of kaleidoscopic sights and sounds. Although the film is a bit abstract and largely free of dialogue (what little speaking there is is a whispered babble of tongues), it has a universal simplicity—we’re seeing life through the wide, innocent eyes of a naif. And what eyes they are. With his crudely drawn stick-figure body and big, round Wiffle-ball head, Cuca is a bundle of jitterbug energy and boundless imagination. Like Riley’s in Inside Out, his noggin is a wondrous place to spend an hour or two. B+