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The King and the Mockingbird Photos

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Movie Info

This animated fantasy tale follows the romance between a lovely shepherdess (Agnès Viala) and a handsome chimney sweep (Renaud Marx). The land's imperious king (Pascal Mazzotti) falls for the beautiful woman and tries to thwart her relationship, but a kind mockingbird (Jean Martin) assists the lovers in evading the ruler. On the king's command, the chimney sweep and his bird friend are imprisoned, and they must escape in order to rescue the young man's true love.

Genre:

kids and family, animation, fantasy
Original Language:

French (Canada)
Director:

Paul Grimault
Release Date (Theaters):

Mar 19, 1980 wide
Release Date (Streaming):

Jan 4, 2017
Runtime:

1h 25m
Production Co:

Antenne-2, Gibe Films

Cast & Crew

Jean Martin
L'oiseau
Voice

Pascal Mazzotti
Le roi
Voice

Raymond Bussières
Le chef de la police
Voice

Agnès Viala
La bergère
Voice

Renaud Marx
Le ramoneur
Voice

Hubert Deschamps
Le sentencieux
Voice

Show all Cast & Crew

News & Interviews for The King and the Mockingbird

Parental Guidance: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Critics Consensus: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 Is Short On Action but Well Acted

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Critic Reviews for The King and the Mockingbird

All Critics (22) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (22)

"The King and the Mockingbird" just might be the best animated film of the year.

December 18, 2014 | Full Review…

Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
On a basic level, The King and the Mockingbird is a fun fantasy. But to the two poets who first imagined it, it must have felt like a repository for all the madness of a still-smoldering world.

December 4, 2014 | Full Review…

Bilge Ebiri
New York Magazine/Vulture
The film is suffused with a subversive attitude toward the rich and clueless, epitomized by a king at war with a talking bird.

November 26, 2014 | Rating: A- | Full Review…

Joe McGovern
Entertainment Weekly
It's recognizably the work of an idiosyncratic artist dealing in bizarre caricature, and exploring weird ideas.

November 24, 2014 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…

Tasha Robinson
The Dissolve
What a tortured path "The King and the Mockingbird" has taken to reach theaters in the United States, and what a treat it is for us to be able to experience it now.

November 21, 2014 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…

Christy Lemire
RogerEbert.com
A catalog of the movie's pleasures barely does justice to this lost-and-found delight.

November 20, 2014 | Full Review…

Ben Kenigsberg
New York Times
An exhausting, exciting use of animation's unique power of moving caricature.

September 15, 2019 | Rating: 4.5/5 | Full Review…

Tim Brayton
Alternate Ending
Decades after it was completed for the final time, it still feels oddly contemporary, while evoking the joys of old-school animation.

June 13, 2016 | Rating: 4.5/5 | Full Review…

Joe Bendel
Epoch Times
A great satire against monarchic pretensions by artists reared in the 1930s agitprop tradition.

November 23, 2014 | Full Review…

Louis Proyect
rec.arts.movies.reviews
By turns lyrical and biting, winsome and cynical, the movie borrows freely from other artists while forging its own idiosyncratic path.

November 20, 2014 | Full Review…

Daniel Eagan
Film Journal International
For the most part this is a lyrical game of cat and mouse with inspirational design and childlike charm.

April 23, 2014 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

Jon Lyus
HeyUGuys

View All Critic Reviews (22)

Audience Reviews for The King and the Mockingbird

Dec 13, 2014

Did you know that one of the more tedious duties of being a king is having your portrait painted over and over again? That is no less true for King Charles XVI of Tachycardia. But it is even worse for him when his portrait takes over his life, and then obsesses over a shepherdess from a painting who is in love with a chimney sweep. Luckily for them, a mockingbird is able to save them from the king, the bird being a veteran of several skirmishes, both verbal and violent, with the real king. "The King and the Mockingbird" is an entertaining old-fashioned animated film that is equal parts surreal and political. In other words, it clears up the mystery of why the king's city is so underpopulated while ending on a very final Marxist note. So, while the movie specializes in some very memorable imagery, at other times, the movie's primitive level of animation makes this seem like a lost extended episode of "Heckle and Jeckle." And yes that's what I get for settling for the dubbed version.

Walter M Super Reviewer