Review: Phantom Boy

Phantom Boy (PG)

France/Belgium 2015 85 mins Dir: Jean-Loup Felicioli & Alain Gagnol Cast (voices): Fred Armisen, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jared Padalecki, Marcus D’angelo, Melissa Disney, Dana Snyder

Remember A Cat In Paris? French animators Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s stylish, refreshingly old-school hand-drawn 2D animation was justly rewarded with an Oscar nomination back in 2012. For their follow-up, the duo have switched locations from Paris to New York, but retain the noir-ish atmosphere, decidedly adult grief subtext and even the Saul Bass-inspired credits sequence. If Studio Ghibli were to attempt a superhero movie, it might look something like this. But while the lean A Cat in Paris navigated its way towards a satisfying Hitchcockian climax with sleek feline agility, Phantom Boy is weighed down by a rather daft and dated plot that makes it feel like an inferior film.

It opens strongly enough in an alternate Gotham where 11-year-old Leo (Marcus D’angelo) nurses a secret. Although the C-word is never mentioned, he’s clearly a cancer boy who’s receiving chemotherapy at a city hospital. This has produced a mysterious side-effect that permits him to leave his body as a rubbery spirit, passing through walls and flying over the metropolis. He’s even able to eavesdrop on his blubbing parents, who put on brave faces in his physical presence. So skilled has Leo become in floating about that he helpfully guides lost spirits back to their bodies to prevent them carking it through prolonged separation. Meanwhile, a dastardly, disfigured, trenchcoat-wearing villain known only as The Face (Vincent D’Onofrio) has seized control of the Big Apple’s power supply and is demanding a $1 billion ransom or he’ll bring the city to its knees with his computer virus. When cop Alex Tanner (Jared Padalecki – yep, Sam Winchester from Supernatural) is injured by The Face’s goons, he winds up in a wheelchair at Leo’s hospital. It quickly becomes clear that he’s the only human who can see the kid in spirit form, so the duo form an unusual alliance in which Leo’s spook snoops around under Alex’s guidance in the hope of wiping the smile off the evil Face.

Some of the characters’ weird, alien-esque slanted eyes and Picasso profiles take a bit of getting used to, but the hand-drawn animation is delightfully fluid, with that lovely shimmery quality that old-timers will recognise from Bob Godfrey’s Roobarb. There’s also some genuine Ghibli-esque emotional depth to Leo’s interactions with his family and the exhilaration with which he takes flight from his weakened body. Trouble is, the whole computer virus thing seems dreadfully thin and old-hat. And while the film has clearly been revoiced by American actors in order to make it more accessible to English-speaking nippers, all the geek talk about backdoors is likely to go over their heads. At least there’s a fine yappy comedy dog and a welcome vein of humour, including a running joke in which The Face is repeatedly thwarted in his attempt to explain how he got such an ugly mug.