When it comes to animated movies almost all of them involve either talking animals or princesses. That doesn’t mean there is something wrong with that (the recent Zootopia is a good example), but I often get the feeling there aren’t enough variety within the genre. So it was refreshing to see Phantom Boy approach its story differently, with a lot of originality as well.
Leo, an eleven-year-old boy from New York, has cancer and has to be treated for it. In the hospital he finds out that he’s able to leave his body with his spirit and fly through the city. He isn’t able to stay out of his body too long though as he runs the risk of disappearing completely. At the same time a man with a misshapen face is terrorising the city.
He has shown that he’s able to completely shut down the city’s power grid and threatens to cause more damage when he doesn’t receive one billion dollars in time. A cop who has seen the criminal, but has ended up in hospital after fighting his henchmen meets Leo, who looks up to him and suggest that he will help him find the criminal.
Directors Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol manage exquisitely to find a balance between the various elements. Although Leo has cancer, it isn’t the focus of the film, but there are moments where you see what it is doing to the people around him. They have emotions they don’t show him directly, but he witnesses them when he steps outside his body. The rest of the movie is about the bond between Leo and the cop and the detective work they have to do to find the bad guy. That baddie actually is really funny and is constantly referencing movies. His little dog also is responsible for many laughs. It makes Phantom boy a special movie which stands out with its style of animation by doing it differently.
