Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

XXPedia This is, by far, the worst movie I've ever seen. The moral is bad, the animation is bad, the characters are unlikable. I can't find a single redeemable quality to this. I remember going to it knowing it was gonna be pretty bad, but when the movie finished, I was shocked at how horrible it was. Ivan's dad is the worst thing about this entire movie. He is the single most unlikable character in the history of fiction. I mean, how can you even write someone this terrible. He publicly embarrasses his child, and when Ivan becomes magically powerful, he exploits him to make himself wealthy, and he gets what's coming to him, I felt no form of sympathy for him, whatsoever. If I could give this movie a negative rating, I would. All in all, avoid this like it's the plague.

dben-21589 The 1.4/5 Star rating on Netflix should have been a dead give-away that this movie would not be that good. The animation was good, the story line was extremely cheesy but was bearable, the music was really good, but there were just a few weird things that made me want to turn it off multiple times.The dad was a failure and was trying to live through his son, and held his son to unfeasible standards, causing his son to feel like a perpetual failure. A great message for the target audience, and a very real issue. Those unrealistic standards that the dad had for his kid i this movie was to be like Tarzan: to climb trees, ride a bike, be strong, and read books. The kid wanted to ditch school to go dumpster diving to collect trash to build uber creepy "garbage friends" that he stored in an abandoned warehouse. Usually these types of movies encourage kids to "be themselves", and encouraging parents to accept their kids for who they are. But, the dad's "encouragement" was uncomfortably extreme for a children's movie, and was downright abusive at times. In risk of sounding like an authoritarian, no parent should encourage their kid to be like Ivan. -I have no idea why the animators decided to give all the women really weird boobs.-I have no idea why girls in Ivan's grade were old enough to have boobs, drive vehicles, look like teenagers, yet be barely learning how to read. It's like they were all 15 year-old learning how to read for the first time.-I don't know why Ivan had to chase letters around the room to represent his dyslexia. That scene didn't make much sense to me. -His creations were EXTREMELY creepy. It was even weirder that the girl like them.-I know that the witch was representative of his fairy god mother. Yet, she was really creepy. He found her drinking in the middle of the woods, got naked, and slept in her clothes. Then he drank weird potions she gave him. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it was weird.-The kid's life was a living hell. Why would she give him a potion that would make his pain go away for only a day? To send him back to the pit of despair?-The years of abuse the dad gave to the kid ended with a simple talk?-At the end, he never really overcame being bullied, or learned how to read.There were other things off about this movie, but these were some of the highlights.

kourosh-2 This movie started off interesting but it took forever for the plot to develop. The child was subject to bullying from everyone including his father and by the end he decided it was better to continue being bullied. What was the character arc? Nobody learned anything or did anything different by the end. I think the writers were trying to make a point but run out of ideas and continued to keep prattling on about Tarzan. There was also the issue of his dyslexia that never got resolved. I was left scratching my head at the end. It also seemed to me that the makers of this movie had a weird breast fetish. At first I thought that characters were a little goofy looking but as more of them made an appearance the started looking creepy and not at all endearing. This is not a suitable movie for children or adults for that matter.

cjturino I found the movie to be a little drawn out and mildly boring. They spend the majority of the movie showing a kid getting bullied. I think the point was clearly made by the second time the kid had been cruelly bullied. The movie kept pounding that same theme over and over and over. I asked my 11 year old if she enjoyed the movie and she said it was only OK. She didn't seem too enthusiastic about it. I might be unfairly comparing this movie to other animated movies like Finding Nemo, The Lion King or The Jungle Book. By those standards this movie was awful. I'm trying to write this review without spoiling anything but I wasn't happy with the ending and the kids acceptance of his situation. If I were to try and pull a lesson out of the movie it would probably have to been that it is better to be bullied than be the bully. That's not a lesson that I would want to impart of my kids. I rather empower my child to stand up for themselves than accept the situation and the fact they will be bullied. In the movie the kid visits the United States to be interviews. The interviewer is wearing a cowboy hat and waving a gun around during the interview. I found this depiction of Americans insulting. BOTTOM LINE, your time is better spent watching paint dry.