This is on Disney+ now. Watched it with the kids this evening. After the first five minutes I was primed to hate it, thinking it was just going to be Little Mermaid. But it isn’t at all, it’s a very sweet movie about friendship, mostly. It won me back over before the end. Kids really enjoyed it too. Recommend!
It was cute enough I suppose. It didn’t do anything surprising, and generally goes exactly where you think it will. But it has its charms, and visually the art style is appealing. My kids enjoyed it and immediately wanted to watch it again.
Lesser Pixar, but worth a watch.
I recently subbed to Disney+ and caught up with Pixar’s recent releases: Soul, Onward and Luca. I enjoy Soul very much but not Onward and Luca. I must say I’m surprise that I am bored with Onwards and Luca. The magic of Pixar is lost to me 😱
The kids love both Onward and Luca though, so, maybe I should just stick to action movies.
I think I had the opposite reaction to you two. Soul was good, but I felt it was ultimately empty (what was the message? Life is worth living?), and I despised Inside Out (and yes, I know I’m the only one). Luca was small in scale compared to those movies, but sort of reveled in its smallness – a tiny seaside Italian village, a handful of interconnected characters, a seemingly unimportant challenge (A tiny pasta-company sponsored triathlon with only a few entrants?). But the relationships between the characters were well done. I especially liked the one-armed dad. That guy was awesome.
I also liked Onward (which could possibly be also described as lesser Pixar), for much the same reasons, but also because Spiderman and Starlord.
I think you are off the reservation about Inside Out, but found Soul lacked some of the charm.
And Onward was fantastic for what it was. And what it was was an examination on the relationship between two brothers. And one they built up and paid off brilliantly. They earned that ending, and laid the groundwork for it all movie.
Wow, to me Soul has a unique message among entertainments aimed at children nowadays. Dreams are all well and good, but maybe chasing that One Big Dream isn’t going to actually end giving you any real satisfaction even if you achieve it, and it’s ok to not really have one to chase in the first place and just enjoy life for what it brings you.
I’m too early in to the movie to have an opinion about its quality, but I’m struck by how the animation style is basically 3d CalArts. Super charming.
I came home at the tail end of my girlfriend watching it and it have to say I had an absolutely visceral negative reaction to how everybody talked out of the side of their face.
We loved this movie. I think the phrase “lesser Pixar” is needlessly pejorative so I’d call it “modest Pixar”. It reminded me a little of The Triplets of Belleville.
Eh I disagree. Lesser Pixar is like Lesser Cohen. It’s not a knock, so much as a descriptive. The average quality is much higher such that even the lesser works still surpass all but the best works in their genre from other studios/ directors.
We don’t disagree much! I just think the word lesser might be taken as a judgment of quality rather than scope or ambition while modest is more descriptive. :)
I love the character names: Luca Pegura and Alberto Scorfano… definitely the best monster names since Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan.
And Sacha Baron Cohen is amazing as Ugo. They should make a sequel starring him.
My name is Luca
I live in the sparkling sea
I live downstream from you
Yes I think you’ve seen me before…
I was just surprised they didn’t do a “Luca sleeps with the fishes” joke.
We watched this a few days ago and thought it was pretty mediocre overall. Had some charming moments but really just felt like a long Vespa commercial to me. I would have liked to see a bit more of the undersea community too because the move to dry land felt rushed.
Wouldn’t be a very good Vespa ad, considering the villain is the one that had one, and once the heroes got theirs, they immediately sold it because they realized they wanted something else.
I loved how Luca fell in love with the Vespa so completely and they wanted one so badly after only seeing one poster. But of course, it wasn’t about the scooter but rather the freedom and independence it represented.
It’s a very sweet and subtle little relationship triangle that plays out in this film. It rang true to experiences I had at a slightly older age.
I thought the final scene was beautiful. Classic cinematic imagery with a monster twist… very emotionally satisfying.
The end credits are a delightful epilogue montage
Yeah, that too! It was fun seeing all those characters in sketchbook drawings. My daughter said she follows some of those artists on Instagram.
This was really cute, and I actually enjoyed it more than I did Raya. To be clear, they’re very different movies and Raya is beautiful, but this was just a lot more charming than I expected and I understand why my youngest nephew is close to having watched this a dozen times already.