not as good as all the hype

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Most people have their whole lifetime to find someone that is a match for them, but for the cicada they only have two days and two nights to breed and then die. The plot summary and structure for this film suggests that it is a version of the story of Cinderella but told with the insect cicada instead of people. This is sort of true I suppose but the story isn't really given the time to go anywhere because instead the film seems to just enjoy the absurdity of the idea of the rush to find that special someone being started and concluded within 2 days and not the decades us humans have.The idea is nicely delivered and the narration by Stephen Fry adds to the wonder of the tale as he does have the type of voice for whimsy and such. There isn't a lot of content here but it is still charming to watch and I liked it for what it does. I was glad I did some reading around it after watching because I had assumed the detailed characters and landscapes were delivered in stop-motion but in fact these are all puppets with the strings and rods removed in postproduction. This is impressive because it is such a charming place and the characters do win you over.It is very much reliant on whimsy and charm though, so if you are in a more demanding mood then perhaps this film will not work for you, but for me the music, the characters, the concept and Fry's narration all came together really well and made for a charmingly slight fairytale fantasy.