There are many elements that make Moomins on the Riviera the type of delightful experience one should expect from a good family film. The most obvious and perhaps even the most audacious is the stylistic choice to employ hand drawn animation techniques, a choice that is indeed becoming rarer and rarer in a cinematic world where animation is simply dominated by 3D animation, which in itself is a fact that is making the vast majority of family animated features look the same and lacking in an original style. The hand drawn animation is used greatly by animator Xavier Picard and makes the film seem more organic and the characters irresistibly cute and adirable. But as well as that it is a conscious artistic choice also made to come as close to channelling the original spirit of the work by the Janssons as possible.
Another important element comes from the screenplay itself. With its bizarre infusion of surrealism and unpredictability in its plot developments, that up the entertainment value of an already excitingly paced film. Even more admirably is the cleverness in the screenplay, a factor that must not be overlooked and that is particularly evident in its balancing of the different layers of humour that call different interpretations from a more innocent and younger crowd to the ones coming from a more learned adult one. In other words, Moomins on the Riviera is an enjoyable experience for kids and adults alike.
Neatly packaging the work is the tasteful soundtrack, with vaudevillian piano bits that recall the glamour of timeless cinema, the aura of an audience's perception of the high society but also admirably almost directly references slapstick comedies of old that seem to be a prime inspiration in the overall identity of Picard's and Hemila's feature film. This is true in sequences such as the still wide shot of the pirates searching for their lost treasure in the house of the Moomins or even more blatantly later on in the film where Papa Moomin is being chased by a gang of policemen, much like the Keystone Kops sequences. It is sequences such as these that serve well to describe the amazing creativity of Moomins of the Riviera, a smart and surprisingly quick witted film as well as the perfect tribute to a celebrated and much loved comic strip that has the potential of winning it an even greater and more international audience.
