Pixar, now in its 26th year as an animation powerhouse, its 35th year as first adopters of computer animation and its 42nd year as graphics pioneers, enjoys enough clout that if the studio so chose, their next major release could be about anthropomorphic farts wrestling with existential dread over their too-brief lifespan. Thankfully, the prestige has yet to go to their heads (or other regions of the body) and they remain invested in telling stories that, if not always unique per se, come in unique packaging. Take Soul, for instance, the most recent addition to Pixar’s Oscar trophy case, a film about dying where the hapless Black protagonist’s body becomes occupied by a firmly white voice: The veneer is “new,” but the concept is well-tread and the execution falters.
Now take Luca, their latest movie, which takes the foundation of Hans Christian Andersen and builds upon it a gallery of delicately curated cultural influences ranging from Studio Ghibli to Aardman Animations to the movies of Luca Guadagnino to boilerplate Italian fairy tales: The particulars are all familiar, but freshened up by the pairings. The threads that first-time director Enrico Casarosa, Pixar Senior Story and Creative Artist Mike Jones and screenwriter Jesse Andrews weave together throughout Luca are endless, but over time grow tangled. It’s less an issue of where the team has sourced their inspiration, and more an issue with how those inspirations collide. Their skeins don’t compliment one another.
They could, of course. But Casarosa, Jones, and Andrews appear out of sync with either themselves or their material—maybe both. All that rich goodness on paper, the many colorful pieces that compose the movie’s whole, grows muddled on screen: The plotting is crushed down, the pacing is rushed and character motivations change on a dime for the convenience of narrative, assuming they’re well-established at all. Luca banks on broad adorableness and, granted, there are worse things that a beautifully animated film about boyhood, budding friendships, sea monsters and the youthful desire for agency could be than “adorable.” But Luca, instead of just adorable, comes frustratingly close to being another thing entirely: Precise instead of wandering, decisive instead of dithering, substantial instead of cute, fluffy and trivial.
The film concerns Luca (Jacob Tremblay), a 13-year-old merman herding goatfish under the waters off a charming old world Italian coastal town, Portorosso. He’s a prototypical Pixar character, dissatisfied with his lot in life and in search of self-actualization that can only be found in the world beyond his door. When he meets free-spirited Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), another fish-boy who lives alone and by his own rules, and discovers that he takes on human form when out of the water, Luca’s path to freedom becomes clear. He and Alberto pose as vagabonds visiting Portorosso; cross the local bully, Ercole (Saverio Raimondo); befriend outsider weird-girl Giulia (Emma Berman); and sign up for the Portorosso Cup, a mettle-testing triathlon throughout the village that rewards the victor with coin—enough to buy a Vespa and go globe-trotting.