A different way of telling a story

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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.