Movie Thoughts: Over the Moon (2020)

• Released: October 23, 2020
  
• Directed by: Glen Keane, John Kahrs
• Running time: 1 h 35 min
• Rating 4/5

Synopsis

In order to prove the existence of her favorite goddess Chang'e, a girl travels to the moon and winds up in a large adventure.

My Thoughts

I watched this movie once before when it first came out and I really liked it, however I never posted an actual blog review of it, so let's have a look at it once more!

Overall I think this is a very solid film. It looks stunning (especially the moon city and creatures), there's some really creative sequences and I like the characters despite them sometimes being pretty basic.

The story revolves around Fei Fei, a girl determined to prove that her favorite goddess Chang'e is real to her family. Her late mother believed vividly in Chang'e, however Fei Fei fears that her family might not. So she, her rabbit Bungee and her to-be stepbrother Chin travel to the moon in order to gather proof that the goddess is real. Chang'e, however, turns out to have her own plans and is desperately looking for something called "the gift", which might be able to save her loved one Hou Yi.

A great movie with great elements, like said before. It's not flawsless, though. I wasn't very fond of some characters like Gobi (though luckily he wasn't too annoying), and not all of the songs I was a fan of. That said, some were absolutely beautiful.

The animation is also stunning and deserves its praise. I also was very pleased to see some brief 2D-animated sequences in here. They also tend to get more creative during some of the song sequences, which is lovely to see. Overall this is some top-notch CGI animation. The character designs I also liked a lot.

The movie also has a heartfelt conclusion with Chang'e coming to terms with her loss of Hou Yi, and Fei Fei comes to accept her new family members, her stepmom and Chin. I honestly liked her relationship with Chin but I wish it could've been a wee bit more flashed out. I would've loved to have seen more interactions of them together, but they're kinda apart for a large chunk of the film and I liked these two characters. So more of them would've been nice but even as is their bond also is pretty darn wholesome.

Overall this is a beautiful animated film based on Chinese mythology. I heavily recommend it.