Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia

Gabrielle Vincent’s Ernest & Celestine books may be harder to come by now, but when I finally watched the 2012 animated adaptation, which got an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature, years after it came out, I liked it enough to track down a former library copy of the first book due to a lack of modern availability. 10 years later, this film would receive a proper sequel, subtitled A Trip to Gibberitia, the idea of which had me excited. Although I had known about it for a while, I somehow missed its limited US theatrical run, but I would finally get to see it when GKIDS listed an English US Blu-ray release, and found to be just as enjoyable as the first film.

Ernest & Celestine

Note: This review contains spoilers for Ernest & Celestine.

While researching The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, I learned more about an animated film called Ernest & Celestine (French: Ernest et Célestine), based on a series of Belgian children’s books by Gabrielle Vincent. The visuals and the premise of a mouse and bear becoming friends in spite of interspecies prejudice were enough to make me curious about seeing it, which became possible once I received the Blu-ray from GKIDS as a Christmas gift. Notably, while it originally premiered in 2012, its stateside release in 2013 made it eligible for the 2014 Academy Awards, where it was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film and ultimately lost to Disney’s Frozen. After finally watching Ernest & Celestine, I am honestly baffled as to how it even lost to Frozen in the first place.