Fantastic Planet

The DVD of this, which does contain extra material, is around seventy-five dollars. But over on YouTube—information may want to be free, but fiction is not information, and it's not clear if this was authorized—a reworking with a new soundtrack is available for nothing but your patience: Fantastic Planet. The film, which is French, comes with a great deal of cultural baggage, among which is the usual interpretation that it is really about class struggle. I confess to feeling that what it's really about is a simple plot idea—much like Planet of the Apes, which was also developed from a French novel of about the same period—and could probably have benefited from a faster pace. Planet of the Apes worked so well on-screen that it expanded into sequels of sequels. This is artistically superior but sometimes the viewer might wish that a touch of commercial canniness had sullied its purity. A Cannes prize-winner in 1973. More pictures; more information? Go to: The Wikipedia.