Courtesy Disney/Pixar
Movies
While we can definitely give points to Pixar’s newest foray Luca for its gorgeous animation and light queer underpinnings (positive queer relationships in mainstream cinema are almost always a plus; see this week’s cover story, page 19), its tone, pacing, style and even narrative are so derivative of the great anime director Hayao Miyazaki that it practically passes homage for straight-up hero worship—only without bothering to understand what’s so special about films like Kiki’s Delivery Service, Ponyo, Spirited Away, etc.
Here we find Luca Paguro (Jacob Tremblay), a young sea monster living underwater near some sun-kissed and impossibly beautiful Italian village (think Cinque Terre) who longs for something more than his family’s underwater farming business. Said family (voiced capably but uninterestingly by Maya Rudolph, Jim Gaffigan and Sandy Martin) is forever warning him to not think about the surface and its “land monsters” but, of course, our hero has feelings.
Enter Alberto Scorfano (Jack Dylan Grazer), another young boy with a secret that is so painfully and obviously telegraphed, they should’ve just named him Alberto Plot Device and been done with it. This guy likes taking it to the surface on the reg (because apparently these sea monsters become passable human people when they’re dry, which we’re just supposed to accept), and he gets Luca to do the same. There on land, the two meet Giulia Marcovaldo (Emma Berman), an adventurous young cycling enthusiast who lives with her dad in the summers. And so the three enter a triathlon inexplicably sponsored by a pasta company in hopes of winning prize money for a Vespa—Pixar’s idea of Italian people being that they’re all obsessed with Vespas and pasta. Luca’s family, meanwhile, wants to know where he’s going all the time, and the town bully is none too pleased, either. The rest of the town hates sea monsters...there’s an angry cat.
Setting aside the coming out/fish-outta-water idea here, Luca drags. And whereas a director like Miyazaki is a master of Ma—the Japanese concept of negative space wherein, by showing his characters experiencing normal or even boring human events, we subconsciously form attachments to them—director Enrico Casarosa’s shambling, unoriginal story feels like it’s constantly searching for things to fill the silence and rarely finding meaningful ways to do so. Maybe there’s something to be said about leaving the womblike ocean for the scary unknown, or maybe there’s an adage about friends and family someplace in there, but even film newcomers like young kids will probably figure out this formulaic piece a few minutes in and wonder why they’ve been so underestimated.
A guy like Miyazaki never treats kids like they can’t understand the world’s tough challenges or more advanced themes—Pixar treats them like they can’t handle anything. And so it goes that Luca plays out like every other Disney thing you’ve ever seen in your life. A pity, that, as the company has proven its cutting-edge animation prowess time and time again. When will the writing department catch up?
6
+Stunningly beautiful
-Just plain not that good; utterly lacking in surprise and originality
Luca
Directed by Casarosa
With Tremblay, Grazer and Berman
Disney+, PG, 95 min.
