Review: “Pip & the Paper Moon” Will Make Grown-Ups Cry

This (fictional) animated film follows a paper bird searching for the moon. It is funny, gorgeous and quietly profound. On paper, that description could fit a dozen family movies released every year, the kind that fill a rainy Saturday and are forgotten by Monday. “Pip & the Paper Moon” is not one of them. It is a film made with enormous care, aimed squarely at children and somehow even more powerful for the adults sitting beside them. By the time the credits rolled at our screening, the sound in the theater was not laughter or applause. It was a room full of grown-ups quietly blowing their noses.

The story begins in a small apartment above a bakery in a nameless American city. A girl named June, home sick from school, folds a bird out of a page torn from her grandfather’s old notebook. That night, the bird wakes up. Pip, as he names himself, has one burning question: what is the bright round thing in the sky, and how does he get there? What follows is a journey across rooftops, rivers, train yards and finally an enormous, windswept prairie, as Pip searches for the moon and the meaning of the strange handwriting on his own wings.

A world made of paper

The first thing anyone will tell you about this film is how it looks, and they will be right. The animators built the entire world to look like it was cut, folded and painted by hand. Buildings have the soft texture of construction paper. Rivers ripple like tissue. Rain falls in tiny torn scraps that catch the light. Every frame looks like a picture book you could hold, and yet the camera moves with a freedom only animation allows.

Color does a great deal of the storytelling. The city is drawn in warm browns and reds, cozy but cramped. As Pip travels further from home, the palette opens into wide blues and soft golds. By the time he reaches the prairie, the screen is almost entirely sky. It is a gorgeous visual idea that even young viewers will feel, even if they could never put it into words.

The score deserves a mention too. It is built mostly from piano and a small string section, with a simple four-note theme that returns at every important moment. By the final act, those four notes alone are enough to make the audience catch its breath.

The voice work is just as thoughtful. Pip is voiced with wide-eyed wonder and impeccable comic timing, never cloying, never too cute. June, who appears mainly at the beginning and end of the film, has only a handful of scenes, but her performance carries the emotional weight of the whole story. And the grandfather, heard mostly in memories and in a few lines read aloud from his notebook, is voiced with a warmth that makes him feel present in every scene, even when he is nowhere on screen.

Directors Ellen Park and Sam Whitaker have said in interviews that they spent nearly five years on the film, with much of that time devoted to testing how paper moves, tears and catches the wind. That patience shows in every frame.

For kids

Bright, funny and never too scary. Younger viewers will find plenty to love here. Pip is a wonderful hero, curious, stubborn and a little clumsy, with a habit of crash-landing in the worst possible places. He picks up a pair of companions along the way: a grumpy pigeon who claims to know every shortcut in the city and a cheerful origami frog who cannot stop jumping into puddles, which is not a great idea for a frog made of paper. Their back-and-forth is genuinely funny, with jokes that land for kids and parents alike.

There are a few tense moments. A thunderstorm over the river and an encounter with a very large, very curious cat may make the youngest viewers grab a hand. But the film never lingers on danger, and it never resorts to the cheap scares or loud chaos that wear out families in some animated films. It earns its PG rating with mild peril and some emotional themes, nothing more.

Good to know for parents

• Best for ages five and up, though younger kids with patience may enjoy it.
• Mild peril during a storm and a chase scene with a cat.
• Themes of loss and memory, handled gently but honestly.
• No bad language and no crude humor.
• A good starting point for conversations about grandparents and saying goodbye.

Bring tissues. Bring your kids. Bring your parents.

Our film critic

For grown-ups

A final act about letting go that left our critic in pieces. Without spoiling the details, the last half hour reveals why Pip feels such a pull toward the moon, and what the handwriting on his wings actually says. It turns a sweet adventure into something much deeper: a story about memory, about the people who stay with us after they are gone and about the courage it takes to let someone go.

What makes the ending work is that the film has been quietly preparing us from the very first scene. Small details, a smell of bread, a tune hummed in the background, a coat hanging on a hook, return in the final act with sudden, overwhelming weight. Nothing is forced, and nothing is explained too much. The film simply trusts its audience to understand, and that trust is what makes it so affecting.

Several adults at our screening told us afterward that they were thinking about their own parents or grandparents for the rest of the evening. One father admitted he had to sit in the car for a few minutes before driving home. That is a remarkable reaction to a movie about a paper bird, and it is the clearest sign that this film has something real to say.

Any flaws?

Honestly, very few. If we are looking hard, the middle stretch in the train yard runs a few minutes long, and one musical number feels more like a nod to the marketing department than a necessary part of the story. Some parents of very young children may find the final act heavy, though we would argue it is handled with more grace than most family films manage. None of this comes close to dimming the overall achievement.

Key takeaway: “Pip & the Paper Moon” is a beautifully crafted family adventure that works on two levels at once, delighting children while quietly devastating the adults beside them.

The verdict

It has been a long time since an animated film felt this complete. “Pip & the Paper Moon” is funny, gorgeous and wise, with a hero you will fall for in minutes and an ending you will be thinking about for weeks. It is the rare family film that every generation in the row will love for different reasons, and it has already earned a place on our list of the best films of the decade. See it on a big screen, see it with people you love and, yes, bring tissues.

• Rating: 5 / 5
• Runtime: 1 h 34 min
• Rated PG

“Pip & the Paper Moon” arrives in theaters nationwide the week before Christmas. Add it to your calendar from our release page, and let us know in the comments who cried first in your family. We already know the answer in ours.