April and the Extraordinary World (2016; Dir.: Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci)

GRADE: B+

By Daniel Barnes

*Now playing at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley.

Pure enjoyment, but then I’ve always been in the bag for humanist sci-fi, lizards wearing robot armor, unusual and meticulous production design, and adventure stories where one of the heroes is a brainy woman and the other is a talking cat.  A cheeky but emotionally mature vision of a retro-future past where Napoleonic rule continued into the 20th century, but a string of unsolved kidnappings of famous scientists kept the world stuck in the steam and coal age, April and the Extraordinary World feels utterly fresh and genuine compared to a please-all-masters appeaser like Disney’s Zootopia.  Married scientists Paul and Annette are working to create a serum of invincibility and immortality when they’re captured by a…