Most critics agree on one thing: Sylvain Chomet’s hand-drawn animation is the reason to see this portrait of Marcel Pagnol. Nearly every review, favourable or not, singles out the craft, the expressive faces and the period detail, and several mention the score as a further pleasure. Those who like it most call it warm, affectionate and mellow, a fond account of a writer’s life and his standing in French culture.
The reservations cluster around the storytelling. Critics find the framing device that brings young and adult Pagnol together either charming or muddling, and a good number call the script a by-the-numbers run through the biography, short on conflict and on any real sense of how Pagnol worked. Several warn that newcomers will feel left outside. The spread is wide: Variety finds the film dramatically inert, while Polygon and Eye for Film count its softness as a virtue. The consensus sits in the middle, admiring the pictures and wishing the film around them had more drive.