It's 19th-century Russia. Young Sasha (Christa Theret in the French version; Chloe Dunn in the English dub) watches her cherished grandfather leave for a voyage to the North Pole on a doomed ship. Years later, Sasha is now 15 and about to have her debutante ball when her family are blamed for a political scandal, and her father now blames her for their fall from grace. So, hurt and ashamed, she does the only thing she can think of doing: she runs away from home, heading to the same place where her grandfather apparently met his demise, to uncover the truth about him and their family.
This 2015 Belgian-French animated effort is absolutely strikingly visualised; the animation style is refreshingly more like that of a comic book than of American or Japanese animation. Therefore, it's a joy to look at. However, the narrative is, as you may have suspected, very derivative. Even worse, though, is how that narrative is told. Director Remi Chaye, working from a screenplay by Claire Paoletti, Patricia Valeix and Fabrice de Costeil, seemed to think his pacing of and emotional approach to it needed to be, respectively, glacial and cold because of its Arctic setting. I disagree; I think it could've been considerably more upbeat and hasty (not to mention humourous, but that was on the screenwriters) without compromising any thematic effect. Instead, I found the approach he took here to be increasingly dull and glassy.
To exacerbate matters, Jonathan Morali's score is generic and heavy-handed and some of the dialogue is very clunky. Overall, despite the beautiful animation, I'm afraid Long Way North was, for me, a long way from enjoyable. 5/10.
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