Fei Fei
The animated musical Over the Moon has received mixed reviews from critics. The film premiered at the Montclair Film Festival on Oct. 17, 2020, and is streaming now on Netflix. The story centers around Fei Fei, who builds a rocket to the moon on a mission to prove the existence of the legendary goddess Chang’e. The cast includes Cathy Ang (Fei Fei), John Cho (dad Ba Ba), Ruthie Ann Miles (mom Ma Ma), Sandra Oh (stepmom Mrs Zhong), Robert G. Chiu (stepbrother Chin), Margaret Cho (Auntie Ling), Kimiko Glenn (Auntie Mei), Ken Jeong (Gobi), Conrad Ricamora (Hou Yi), and Phillipa Soo (Chang’e). The creative team includes Glen Keane (direction), Audrey Wells (screenplay), Sony Pictures Imageworks (animation), Edie Ichioka (editing), Steven Price (score), and Christopher Curtis, Marjorie Duffield and Helen Park (original songs).
AP (Mark Kennedy): It opens and closes in modern day China, but the bulk of the film is set in Lunaria, an imaginary kingdom on the dark side of the moon. … The original songs include eight varied and delightful ones. … Fei Fei’s build up for her moonshot and the launch is perhaps the most thrilling element of the film. … But the film looses coherence and urgency on the dark side of the moon. 3 stars out of 4.
CNN (Brian Lowry): Although the movie is visually impressive, the Chinese-American co-production suffers from a too-thin story … and a whole lot of soaring but generally unmemorable songs. … [Keane] clearly learned the tricks of the trade during his time at Disney, with the movie appearing pretty desperate to conjure that sort of magic … a bright, shiny object that never quite escapes the bonds of Earth.
New York Post (Johnny Oleksinski): The catchy lunar tunes leap around genres, from inspiring ballads such as “Rocket to the Moon” to a high-energy dance-pop number called “Ultraluminary.” … We’ve seen this journey before, but, to its credit, Over the Moon gives fleshed-out stories to just about everyone the girl meets. … The movie can, at times, be too nice. Just don’t come looking for the dark side of the moon. 3 stars out of 4.
RogerEbert.com (Brian Tallerico): This is a film that so blatantly cribs from other popular works that it never develops a personality of its own. … The music is generally forgettable, though a song near the end that directly addresses loss is easily the most powerful in the film because it’s the first time the movie feels like it calms down and confronts what it should have been about. 2 stars.
Vulture (Bilge Ebiri): Over the Moon might be one of the most gorgeous animated films ever made — but it’s gorgeous in strange ways. It finds beauty as it whipsaws between wildly different tones and visual styles. … The shifts in form might lose you from time to time, but the film conjures some genuinely powerful emotions. … The story turns out to be not just about those left behind finding a way to move on, but also about those who have departed learning to move on as well.