Parents' Guide to The Inventor

This animated biopic tries hard to be simple but is really quite complex. With The Inventor, writer-director-animator Jim Capobianco offers a memorable animation style -- weaving together stop-motion puppets and hand-drawn animation -- but he jams in so much information that young viewers may be a bit overwhelmed. Da Vinci's genius is inspiring, and his contraptions and inventions are definitely the kind of stuff that's likely to spark kids' interest and imagination. But the geopolitical issues can be a bit hard to follow, such as why the pope is essentially a king.

And while kids often spark to "gross," "grisly" is a different matter -- so the film's emphasis on da Vinci stealing cadavers in the dead of night feels somewhat out of place. Tweens may understand that it's part of his pioneering work in identifying anatomical functions, but it could be too much for some kids. Da Vinci's goal of identifying "the whereabouts of the human soul" and the meaning of life is also quite lofty. As the screenwriter of Ratatouille, Capobianco succeeded in making an unbelievable scenario -- a rat becoming a master chef -- wondrous. But his take on the story of one of history's most impressive minds, told in a throwback mix of Rankin-Bass-like stop-motion animation and hand-drawn images, may ultimately appeal more to adults than kids. But The Inventor succeeds in showing how da Vinci's imagination fueled innovation on many fronts and in inspiring viewers to dream big.