Summary
When young Zucchini accidentally kills his single alcoholic mother he is placed in a foster group home where he meets other children who are all in a similar plight and don’t know what to think of the new kid.
A Kid’s Perspective
“My Life As a Zucchini” is a movie that resists any effort I undertake to categorize it alongside other films. It’s animation is top notch along side films like “Kubo and the Two Strings” but it is no way the adventure that Kubo is. It’s a dark film, but not like “Nightmare Before Christmas” or “Coraline.” It’s a movie for kid but not like “Coco” or "Moana."
I want to say that it is a great kid’s stop motion film, but I’m afraid people would be surprised by how serious the film is, but I also don’t want to give the impression that it is too serious for kids. It isn’t.
What is unique about this film is that it seems to be genuinely from a child’s perspective. I don’t just mean that the protagonist is a kid. There are lots of movies which have child protagonists but they don’t necessarily read as from a child’s perspective.
Take “Coco” or “Moana” for instance. These are films which feature a child doing incredible things, but the kids don’t act like kids and they don’t think like children. Their sense of logic and understanding is similar to an adults. The adults in the films never try to hide life’s harder side from them, don’t really talk down to them, and one gets the feeling that either one would be pretty self sufficient if push came to shove.
Not so with Zucchini. He is a child through and through. He doesn’t understand how permanent his mother’s death is and while he and the other foster kids may know that there is a thing called sex that adults do, they don’t understand it. His ways of understanding life and the hardships he is being exposed to is to try and talk about it with other kids who don’t understand it either. While they can never solve the problems of death or parental abandonment, they instead end up connecting with each other the way that kids naturally do.
This is what is truly special about this film. It presents a view of children and how they see the world that is rarely seen on screen. I imagine it would do well as an introduction to some of the harder aspects of life to a child who is going to school and hearing for the first time about families that are broken. It presents the beginning stages of a child’s understanding of theses subjects in a way that is authentic and understanding.
It’s like a kind adult taking a child aside and explaining carefully and calmly what some of the most challenging turns of life are, and they affect those around us.
Verdict
While I can’t say this movie was especially interesting to me personally, I could never say that I don’t recommend it. I think for its target audience, it is a very useful and beautiful film which expresses its ideas simply and confidently, assuring a child that despite the hardships of life, together, we can find life and laughter and even, new family.
