The voice casting and the visual representations of the characters the boy encounters on his journeys are superb. The title character, as a boy, is voiced by Riley Osborne (the director’s son) and, as a young man, by Paul Rudd. Albert Brooks is especially menacing as the rapacious Businessman who boasts of owning all the stars in the heavens. Leavening the movie is a jazzy period score by Hans Zimmer and Richard Harvey through which are woven songs by the French chanteuse Camille and fragments of vintage French chansons by the singer and songwriter Charles Trenet.

But the film, as if wary of seeming too spaced-out, devotes more time than necessary to its contemporary frame and not enough to the original story. That said, the framing delivers an unusually forceful and imaginative depiction of a child’s-eye vision of the grown-up world: a fearsome urban jungle peopled by expressionless, robotic beings weighed down by responsibility.

Although the message of the novella — that “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” — is reiterated, the film’s caricature of the digital age atmosphere is so forbidding that it makes the charming fancies of “The Little Prince” seem quaint and frivolous. The movie, a Netflix release receiving a theatrical run, can even be seen as an allegory about filmmaking in today (by a director of “Kung Fu Panda”), straddling the line between modern and traditional styles and blending the best of both. Inevitably, youth, vigor and technological innovation triumph over nostalgia.

“The Little Prince” is rated PG (parental guidance suggested) for thematic elements that portray modern life as a nightmare that cannot be avoided. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.