U 2006

Animated beasties, both cool and cranky, proliferate in this French animated film aimed squarely at tweens, along with their adult parents, who will find its witty banter and subversive repartee très amusants. Mona (voiced by Isild Le Besco) is an orphaned princess who lives in a tower - one that's strangely larger on the inside than it is on the outside - with two rat-like guardians. When lonely little Mona cuts her finger and cries, she's joined by U, a female unicorn of roughly the same age, who vows to stick around for as long as Mona needs her. But as Mona morphs into a lanky, spacey teenager, with impossibly long, luxurious ears, she experiences the first stirrings of romance with a charming musical cat, and U's usefulness is thrown into question. French author and illustrator Grégoire Solotareff, who has over 125 picture books to his credit, provides the delightful illustrations to this handsome, hand-drawn entertainment. Solotareff doesn't believe in condescending to children, and neither do we, which is a gentle way of warning that this film contains subtitles.