Ploey is an English-language Icelandic animated film about an eponymous plover chick who gets into all kinds of trouble. On the surface, it looks like a perfectly good kid’s movie following long-established templates: talking, anthropomorphized animals, a young protagonist with lots of challenges to overcome and a whole cast of memorable sidekicks. But the film does not actually hit any of those marks.
The first issue is with the protagonist. To put it bluntly, the Ploey character sucks. His many issues in the film are rooted in his unwillingness to function as a plover. He refuses to try to fly, he ignores the community aspect of his species and he is totally heedless of others’ advice. Now, such a protagonist is a long animated-film trope, but Ploey (Jamie Oram) is not just headstrong or individualistic; he is totally checked out of life. Except for one thing: he is a very horny little bird and has the hots for Ploeveria (Harriet Perring), another plover chick. But here, rather than endearing, he again comes across as petulant and demeaning. To top off the litany of issues with the lifeless protagonist, Ploey does not even look like a plover chick. He looks more like a half-grown Rhode Island Red chicken.
Part of why Ploey as a character fails to grab the viewer stems from the fact that the pacing and editing of the film is hard to grasp. The plot is based on the plover colony flying south for winter, while Ploey, refusing to fly, stays behind. It is genuinely tough to follow as the film makes radical time-leaps or just yadda-yaddas through large parts of the backstory for the cast of talking critters. As a result, none of the characters really develop, except for Ploey, who does finally, after months of whining and walking upright, begin to fly. Whether a kid would be able to follow the plot machinations here is an open question.
There are other elements of Ploey which make it feel ad hoc or not suited for children. For instance, the plovers, which in real life are quite extraordinary and culturally-significant birds, are too simplistic and boring. A virtue of such a cartoon, usually, is that the child-viewer gets some modicum of respect for the natural world. But this film will not instill such feelings. While literally every other animal in this world talks, there is a cat who only makes ordinary cat noises. Who let that slip by? The film also lacks a comedic character. An 80-minute film for children with no laughs? It is preposterous, especially when there also are not any songs. No jokes and no sing-alongs?
For adult viewers, there are some cringe-worthy moments. One major character development for Ploey happens when he has a dream that his beloved Ploeveria, who flew south with the others, is talking to another male plover chick. How dare she! To show her, Ploey decides to finally take action to save his friends. Even Disney is cranking out vaguely-feminist-if-you-squint animated films these days. Another poor choice by the filmmakers was to have Ploey encounter a mouse who needs help crossing a river and who speaks with a Mexican accent. Mexicans are portrayed as vermin and are trying to cross boundaries that they should not try to cross: that is just a little too on-the-nose for a far-too-ugly political point of view to be allowed through and into the final cut.
Making a good animated feature outside of a Disney-Pixar studio is apparently quite difficult. But even with that generous handicap added to an evaluation of it, Ploey is simply not any good.
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