NOW IN THEATERS! Once you step into this moving work of art, your head can never leave Kensuke’s Kingdom, the magnificent two-dimensional animated feature by directors Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry. Frank Cottrell Boyce wrote the screenplay, which was adapted from the novel by Michael Morpurgo. Young Michael (Aaron MacGregor) is being made to live on a boat with his family, as his dad (Cillian Murphy) thinks this is the best idea. When his mum (Sally Hawkins) finds him below, miserably looking at a picture of their dog, Stella, she reminds him that a boat is no place for a dog and that Stella is going to be happy living with Uncle Peter.
Michael reluctantly gets back to swabbing the deck while jealously watching his older sister, Becky (Raffey Cassidy), get to do the more fun jobs on the boat. They sail past many countries and end up far out at sea in a horrible storm one night. A huge wave hit the boat, and Michael is swept overboard. Barely surviving, he comes to an island, where he is surrounded by high cliffs and trapped on a tiny beach that gets tinier when the tide comes in. Sleeping in a hollow log while bitten by ants, he finds bowls of water and raw fish laid out for him the next morning.

“…Michael is swept overboard. Barely surviving, he comes to an island…”
He soon finds his mysterious benefactor, a grouchy, elderly Japanese man named Kensuke (Ken Watanabe), who makes it clear Michael is to leave him alone. Young Michael naturally gets into mishaps and starts to learn the rules and scope of the kingdom Kensuke has built on the uncharted island.
Kensuke’s Kingdom is a masterpiece of hand-drawn animation, showing the heights the form can reach. Boyle and Hendry are geniuses at manipulating the tones between the foreground characters and the deep background imagery they inhabit. By imitating certain camera tricks with the drawings, they pull off things with great flair that cameras simply cannot. All these microscopic details are inhabiting the island world’s ecology, even inside the broad strokes of the breathtaking landscapes.
This is truly the next level of cinematic castaway fantasy, as Kensuke’s jungle domain makes the Swiss Family Robinson tree house look like the Pioneer chicken stand. This is the kind of visual island splendor you want to visit over and over, as fun as The Blue Lagoon, except you can bring the kids. Also, there is a reverence within the film over the act of drawing what is around you. Both Michael and Kensuke draw everything they see in a ritualistic fashion that helps define themselves.