The movie is an adaptation, so it must be judged as an adaptation meaning separate Gibran's work and judge the movie on its ability to complement the original text.
Plot 0/10: The original book had a very loose plot that exists solely to allow Almustafa to switch from topic to topic. It's usually something like "And so-and-so said, 'Speak to us of blank.'" and then Almustafa talks about whatever. So the movie chose to make those segments longer, throw in some conflicts, romance, jokes, and standard archetypes. I'm guessing it was an effort to make the movie appealing to a wider audience, but it failed miserably. Nearly every plot item that was thrown into this movie was complete garbage, even Almitra's arc made me annoyed because it felt lifted from GKIDS's Song of the Sea (which really deserved an Oschar). The humor feels like something taken out of a really crappy children's movie. I've seen people calling this movie 'Art Film', but it's not. Fantasia is art film and this movie could have been but it tried to reach an audience that would never appreciate this movie and alienated the real audience. I somewhat agree with the people who call this a kids movie, because it was seriously dumbed down. I know 0/10 seems harsh but there is seriously nothing positive to say about the plot, excluding the source.
Animation 6/10: There's been a trend to use 3D with toon shaders to create a traditional animation look and it's something that still doesn't quite work. The backdrops on this movie are fantastic, but there's something revolting about 3D motion and shadows that can't be fixed without a Disney scale budget, and toon shaders only make shadows worse. The 3D is painful there were several instances where I had to look away because it was so darn awful. I also saw quite a few animation errors particularly involving clipping and eye motion. The shorts that are actually based on The Prophet tend to be better and they are all very different from each other which is nice, but this also causes varying levels of quality. Fortunately for every bad short there's a really amazing short and overall it's decent. If the movie was just the shorts I would recommend it.
Acting 5/10: I'm usually really impressed with the actors GKIDS can pull. Their Ghibli work is fantastic and Song of the Sea had some really strong actors, but this movie was just disappointing. Liam Neeson did a fantastic job, but was held back by the animation, the secondary character were pretty standard for an animation movie especially the government workers, but the biggest disappointment was Quvenzhané Wallis who is one the few decent child actors but doesn't quite live up here. Her first line was pretty decent (but that's largely due to the buildup), but after that she's just another child actor who doesn't quite know how to act in an animated movie.
Plot 0/10: The original book had a very loose plot that exists solely to allow Almustafa to switch from topic to topic. It's usually something like "And so-and-so said, 'Speak to us of blank.'" and then Almustafa talks about whatever. So the movie chose to make those segments longer, throw in some conflicts, romance, jokes, and standard archetypes. I'm guessing it was an effort to make the movie appealing to a wider audience, but it failed miserably. Nearly every plot item that was thrown into this movie was complete garbage, even Almitra's arc made me annoyed because it felt lifted from GKIDS's Song of the Sea (which really deserved an Oschar). The humor feels like something taken out of a really crappy children's movie. I've seen people calling this movie 'Art Film', but it's not. Fantasia is art film and this movie could have been but it tried to reach an audience that would never appreciate this movie and alienated the real audience. I somewhat agree with the people who call this a kids movie, because it was seriously dumbed down. I know 0/10 seems harsh but there is seriously nothing positive to say about the plot, excluding the source.
Animation 6/10: There's been a trend to use 3D with toon shaders to create a traditional animation look and it's something that still doesn't quite work. The backdrops on this movie are fantastic, but there's something revolting about 3D motion and shadows that can't be fixed without a Disney scale budget, and toon shaders only make shadows worse. The 3D is painful there were several instances where I had to look away because it was so darn awful. I also saw quite a few animation errors particularly involving clipping and eye motion. The shorts that are actually based on The Prophet tend to be better and they are all very different from each other which is nice, but this also causes varying levels of quality. Fortunately for every bad short there's a really amazing short and overall it's decent. If the movie was just the shorts I would recommend it.
Acting 5/10: I'm usually really impressed with the actors GKIDS can pull. Their Ghibli work is fantastic and Song of the Sea had some really strong actors, but this movie was just disappointing. Liam Neeson did a fantastic job, but was held back by the animation, the secondary character were pretty standard for an animation movie especially the government workers, but the biggest disappointment was Quvenzhané Wallis who is one the few decent child actors but doesn't quite live up here. Her first line was pretty decent (but that's largely due to the buildup), but after that she's just another child actor who doesn't quite know how to act in an animated movie.