The movie tells the story of newly born Kirikou, a special child who asks his mother to be born, and who, immediately after being born, starts talking, running, and offering a wise practical approach to life to his fellow villagers in their fight against Karaka, the beautiful wicked sorceress who has been impoverishing his village.
The story is entertaining and full of magic, with great messages for children, but will enchant adults because is unique, it has soul and wit, it is clever and tells a West-African story that is respectful with that culture and philosophy of life. Even the approach to the wickedness of the sorceress is West-African, as Karikou tries to understand why Karaka is so evil to fix her, not to destroy her. Wining over and destroying are two different things, and the first gets better results is a great message for kids. Even the ending of the movie is unexpected, still in tune with this same approach: magical and very alien to Western Culture.
The character of Kirikou is just adorable, a sweet know-it-all boy, and very naughty child at times. The rest of the characters are realistic, a mix of the human types we could find in a small African rural village.
The old-style flat animation is an artistic reinterpretation of the reality, in which landscapes, dresses, hairdos, architecture, and other elements directly mimic those of West Africa. That is, they are not a western modernised interpretation of them despite the movie being European. Ocelot used African Art as a direct and strong inspiration for the drawing of this film. Especially beautiful is the detailed and artistic drawing of the landscapes -this is one of Ocelot's signature marks- in a naïf precious style, as eye-catching as the bright earthy bold colours of the film.
The English dubbing is lovey, as it was personally supervised by Ocelot. Still, when the characters sing, the wonderful original music and chants get lost a bit. The French original version with English subtitles is truly delightful.
Senegalese Youssou N'Dour and Cameroonian Manu Dibango provide an very cool, catchy and African soundtrack.
The movie being respectful with and true to the West-African reality, it depicts most women with their breasts uncovered, while Kirikou is naked during the whole movie, moving his bum and "willy" cutely. Puritans and morons of the world, especially out of continental Europe, thought that this was an offence and inappropriate for children viewing, and the screening of the film was banned in some countries; even the release of the DVD in the USA and the UK was not exempt from controversy either. Shocking but true. If you cannot explain to your child that mummy has breasts, that they produce milk, that they are a natural part of the human body, and that in some parts of the world they do not cover them, I feel sorry for your child. Children should be protected from this sort of people who try to "protect" them, and not vice versa. Show Kirikou to your kids, and seat side by side with them, to explain them what they are watching instead of parking them in front of a TV, unsupervised.
