The Inventor review – Leonardo da Vinci animation explores the great artist’s later life

Stephen Fry donnishly voices the Italian genius in this somewhat storyless family film about his life and explorations

‘Excommunication is too good for him! I should boil him in his own drawing ink!” Pope Leo X (voiced by Toast of London’s Matt Berry) is very cross indeed with Leonardo da Vinci for dissecting cadavers. “It makes my stomach all queasy-weasy!” Berry’s papal peevishness is a spark of joy in an otherwise drab kids movie about Leonardo in his later years, made using a mix of stop-motion and hand-illustrated animation. It’s a bit of a bore and a chore, and feels like the kind of “educational” film that will be foisted on kids in class during wet playtime on rainy days.

The man himself is voiced by Stephen Fry (not bothering with an Italian accent; the script drops in the odd per favore and grazie to compensate). The film opens in Rome, 1516, and Leonardo’s scientific explorations have put him in hot water with the pope. Why can’t the old boy stick to painting “pretty pictures”, mumbles Leo X. So Leonardo accepts an offer from King Francis I of France to join his court.