“Luca” Film Review

By Quinn Marcus

Pixar may be one of the most universally loved animated studios on the planet, consistently opening our eyes to new, wonderful worlds for our imagination to grasp, and successfully upping the standard for every other kid’s film out there. Sure, they’ve had a few hiccups (The Good Dinosaur, Cars 2, etc.) but I haven’t disliked a new Pixar film in years, Luca may have changed that. Now, I didn’t necessarily hate this film, but from what I’ve come to expect with each upcoming Pixar film, it definitely doesn’t rank amongst the greats. To put it simply, if you walk into this film anticipating Pixar’s next masterpiece, you’ll hate it a whole lot more than I did. My dad loves to use the word “cute” to describe many of the films I’ve shown him, so, as you can probably imagine, hearing that word pisses me off, but I have absolutely zero hesitation applying that word to this simple, very average animated flick.

Luca tells the story of a young boy/sea monster named Luca in a coming-of-age adventure in which Luca and his best friend Alberto decide to leave the safety of their home in the ocean to accomplish their dream of owning a Vespa and traveling the world. That’s literally what the entire plot revolves around, a frickin’ Vespa, give me a break.

Alright, time to get down to business (no, not in the Mulan way), in order to grade Luca properly, we must first discuss what makes the majority of Pixar’s films so great, why are they acclaimed as much as they are? Well, for starters, the animation always seems to improve with every film they release. Toy Story 4 marked a massive step forward for the studio’s already praised animated team, and you could confuse Soul for the real world if the character’s heads weren’t shaped like pieces of fruit. Luca doesn’t have the best animation of the bunch, but I am happy to say that once again, the animated team outdid themselves, the water, characters, buildings, everything was gorgeous. There were quite a few very impressive shots, and even my parents, who barely enjoyed the movie, couldn’t help but commemorate how beautiful it looked.

The second most important thing is the classic emotional gut-punch we get from Pixar’s films. Up is a fantastic example, featuring one of the most heart-wrenching openings in movie history, and proving that you can set the tone for a film with one of the opening scenes, rather than the ending. Luca lacks the emotional connection I have with most of Pixar’s films, several of which made me cry, we don’t get to know much about any of our main characters, their development is the equivalent to a piece of cardboard. There are rare moments when the film finally begins to settle down to talk about who our characters are, which may be one of the film's weakest aspects. Hell, even Onward made me more emotional than this, probably because the story’s a little more complex than a blank sheet of paper.

This brings me to the third most important part of a Pixar film, its expertly crafted world. Both Incredibles movies, Brave, and several other Pixar films all have excellently built, fantastical stories that are creative, and hold intriguing characters. Luca also lacks this to a certain extent, and even left open multiple plot holes that are easily identifiable, and annoyed me quite a bit. For example, it’s never explained why the sea monsters turn into humans when they go on land, Disney’s The Little Mermaid did this flawlessly, and I don’t consider that to be a perfect film. I won’t get into more to avoid spoilers, but even my little siblings were able to point out several questionable aspects of the film’s plot. Usually, if a Pixar film isn’t a full-on drama, with little bits of comedy interwoven here and there, it’s a hilarious film.

Luca actually has a lot of quality laughs, the first half of the film is hysterical, and surprisingly very entertaining. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is actually pretty boring and has one of the stupidest pieces of conflict out of all of Pixar’s films. The villain is horribly generic, and can easily be made fun of, I’ve seen characters like this a million times before, it was clear that the writers were playing it safe on that end. I will say, as one more positive, that the voice work, as always, was terrific, Jacob Tremblay and Jack Dylan Grazer were funny and had solid chemistry, but were nothing too remarkable. If I were to compare Luca to one of Pixar’s films, I’d say something like Monsters University is a fairly good match. Both are enjoyable, if not very smart, each has dazzling animation in an otherwise less-than-complex storyline. In the end, I can see why a lot of kids would end up at the very least, having fun with this film, but I can spot a special animated feature when I see one, and Luca isn’t one of those.