Despite a laudable ethical stance on performing animals, this family animation’s zero-to-hero tale fails to engage
This animated Argentinian-Spanish co-production offers a pretty undistinguished tale of a zero-to-hero talking creature (a scrawny, bug-eyed hen named Turuleca, voiced by Elisabeth Gray) who joins the circus and becomes a star – though it’s fair to say that the character, lighting and set designs are often striking. Even so, most of the nice, more-central-to-the-plot characters are very bland, while Turuleca herself is an emphatically hideous creation. On the other hand, there’s a higher degree of craft to the villains and secondary cast members, with their gargoyle faces and stylised figures.
The opening act, where our avian heroine is acquired by sweet little old retired
music teacher Isabel (Roxanne Bachmann), seems to augur the usual hyper-idealised view of farm life. But when Isabel falls off a roof and has to go to hospital to recover from amnesia, things kick up a notch: Turuleca, on her way to find her mistress, falls in with a troupe of circus folk.