Luca - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7

General Audience Score - 7

Pixar Animation Studios which first dropped Toy Story on us back in 1995 kept an absolutely stellar record of phenomenal original films up until Toy Story 3 in 2010. Since then the Pixar track record has suffered significantly with Pete Doctor’s Inside Out & Soul being the only films worth mentioning with much truly outstanding originality. Here comes 2021 and another new director to the Pixar animation world, Enrico Casarosa, gives us Luca to try his hand at breathing some life into the dying, creativity fueled Pixar machine that once was at the top of the industry. The beautiful color palette the film uses to bring us to this small Italian town immediately grabs our attention, it’s truly something to behold and the animation is the standard of excellence we know and love from Pixar. The originality the films premise revolves around is what makes the movie shine but it falters in the end due to some more mundane aspects of the film. The story meanders it’s way to a perfectly standard finale and although the film spends the whole runtime trying to convince us of it, we’re left wondering what’s really that special about Luca.

We’re introduced to Luca, his family and members of his community of underwater dwellers who look part muppet baby, part sea snake and part Creature From The Black Lagoon. Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) is bored with the monotony of life as each day we see him taking his herd of fish out to pasture. He’s been taught to hide from boats that pass overhead and that the land dwellers are not to be messed with, but when Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) shows up, he introduces Luca to the mysterious world above the water. When Alberto pushes Luca onto land, he turns human and although terrified, is immediately captivated by the sights and sounds of a world he’s never known. The movie really hits it’s stride in the first act as the confident and charismatic Alberto shows Luca how to be human and the simplest of stories centers around them, their budding friendship and a desire to jump a homemade scooter off a ramp into the ocean. Eventually the boys move to the local fishing town and meet Giulia (Emma Berman), a girl obsessed with winning a local triathlon that involves bike riding as well as pasta eating and they find that winning the race would allow them to purchase an actual motorized scooter that they envision riding around the whole world. But Ercole is the town’s running six time champion who’s not beyond fighting dirty to win and there’s always the threat of the boys being discovered as mer-boys by the town’s residents anytime they get wet.

I won’t spoil who wins the final big race but by the time someone crosses the finish line, we’ve learned very little. The simplicity the film thrives in during the first half is ultimately it’s downfall by the end with nothing of interest, of any concern or at any sort of stakes taking place. The film centers around and belongs to Luca and Alberto and the filmmakers can be commended for not shying away from focusing on the friendship between two boys. Although never directly, the subtle references to homosexual relationships being acceptable and something to embrace was nice to see depicted in children’s animation. The beautiful animation is matched by a wonderful score, it’s well constructed, light and bouncy with hints of the accordion and violin thrown in for good Italian measure. The young voice actors were well cast but the humor trickled down at an unsteady pace and dried up completely by the conclusion.

SUMMARY - While the animation, bright colors and simplicity of the story was something that worked well at first, there’s nothing left to push the film over the finish line. While Luca is admittedly cute, charming and ascetically pleasing, it’s creativity runs dry, like the land the boys end up on, and it all feels like a fish out of water.