Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be

Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be (2022) is a French-Luxembourg animated feature you can watch online on iFILM. Hand-drawn in soft watercolor, it follows writer René Goscinny and illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé as they bend over a blank sheet and dream up one cheeky little boy.

Nicolas steps right off the page and into his creators' studio. He scraps and makes up in the schoolyard, pulls pranks at summer camp, wants to grow up to be a pilot, and finds something funny in the dullest afternoon. The two grown men at the drawing table argue with him, laugh with him, and drift back into their own childhoods. Alain Chabat and Laurent Lafitte lead the voice cast.

Directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre kept the loose, airy line of Sempé's originals intact, and the film took the Cristal at the Annecy animation festival. It's a quiet picture with no big plot twists — a gentle pick for a family evening, equally warm for readers who grew up on the books and for kids meeting Nicolas for the first time. Stream Little Nicholas (2022) online on iFILM.