If you’re in a part of the world that’s going through a bad heatwave this summer, then you might want to watch Disney and Pixar’s new film Luca with an advisory warning to stay indoors with your air conditioning and keep hydrated. Because otherwise, our two main leads will make you the viewer extremely jealous as they splash up and down the water.
It’s hard not to see it in some way as an ideal close to recent quarantines, one could live vicariously for an hour and a half through Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) and his pal Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) exploring outdoors after feeling cooped up in the same familiar ocean for so long.
I’ve talked with friends who have asked me “so it’s sorta like a boy-Little Mermaid?” when I gave a summary of the plot, which revolves around Luca’s parents (Jim Gaffigan and Maya Rudolph, making a name for herself in terms of playing energetic cartoon moms this year) hoping to keep their son away from any human-related danger, as did King Triton and Ariel and Marlin with his son Nemo. But here’s the thing about originality- you can’t create things in a vacuum. Everything that’s ever been written takes influence from something that came before it, and artists always draw from what they enjoy or grew up with.
Here, director Enrico Casarosa uses a lot of his childhood memories in Genola, Italy to what makes for a very engrossing atmosphere, of which Pixar’s art team are happy to experiment with for impressive results. The animators get a lot of great visual material simply from Luca’s imagination, allowing him to fly through space and zoom down a Vespa scooter in some impressive sequences. Pixar’s been acquiring a number of comparisons with some of Studio Ghibli’s work in the past couple of years, and it’s not hard to see why here.
Luca and Alberto’s fantasies of traveling through the surface on said scooter go from riding down a rocky hill off a cliff into the ocean repeatedly, to entering the Portorosso Cup triathlon in the fishing village nearby in hopes of winning the prize money. Despite the two sea kids befriending the young racer Giulia (Emma Berman) and her burly but good-hearted fisherman father (Marco Barricelli), they still have to rely on the human disguises all sea monsters acquire when they go above, lest the townsfolk freak out and hunt them down. And Luca’s parents venture on land in pursuit of their adventurous son, bumbling around the city and hilariously knocking random kids into the water to expose Luca’s true form.
The reigning champion and local bully Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo) is incredibly suspicious about these newcomers, to an absurd degree. At points I was left thinking “brah, you’re like what, 45 years old? And you’re trying to beat up and go ‘this is my town’ at what looks like two sixth-graders?”
So yeah, perhaps one could think of the film as just a gender-inverted take on Ariel’s story, except there are two heroes now on a journey to the surface world. What’s more, turns out there’s a rift- no pun intended- in how far Luca and Alberto feel they can go into human society, with the former being inspired by Giulia’s schoolbooks and wanting to learn more about life above the water. Said rift winds up being the main conflict of the story, and whether or not their friendship can withstand those differences in opinion. But just because you love someone doesn’t necessarily mean you both need the same solution to your problems, which feels like the core moral at play here.
And in a way, both Luca and The Little Mermaid draw influence from Pinocchio in different manners. Ariel being tempted by Ursula’s offer isn’t too unlike the wooden puppet boy falling for Honest John’s con, and Luca’s desire to become a “real boy” is a clear similarity. The film in fact isn’t shy about this, as Pinocchio is one of the books Luca is impressed by. Heck, you could detect Frankenstein in here somewhat, with the villagers fearing what they’re unfamiliar with. It’s a unique blend of a traditional misfit story (Guilia names their racing team “the underdogs”) and encouraging the kids in the audience to dream bigger.
Basically, this is one of the breezier films in Pixar’s catalog, even if it does hit the trademark emotional beats the studio is known for. Not to a gut-punching degree as Inside Out or Up, but there is an uncomplicated sincerity of the three heroes’ relationship. I think there’s more story potential with this cast going forward, in fact I’d be interested in the ideas the director’s had for a follow-up.
If there’s any real sticking point, it’s how some information was left on the table. The runtime is a bit quicker than average for most Pixar films, so I feel there was more about Alberto’s family we could have learned about, some of the history between the town and the sea monsters, how the underwater society works, etc.
But even if Luca isn’t super ambitious in its plot details, it’s still a cute and positive-minded fable with some impressive artwork that your kids will get hooked on (yeah, I was going to make that lame joke, couldn’t help it). If you’ve had the chance to see it, let us know your opinion on FAN’s social media as always!