Chances are you don’t know much about Pixar’s latest feature Luca, which was quietly released on Disney+ last Friday to little fanfare. But if you’ve heard anything about it, you’re probably familiar with the few talking points repeated so consistently one has to wonder if they originated in a Walt Disney Pictures press release. To wit: Luca is a minor, yet charming, seaside tale that borrows heavily from The Little Mermaid, a little bit from Call Me by Your Name, and most crucially from two Hayao Miyazaki classics: Porco Rosso and Ponyo. The former shares a gorgeous Italian setting with Luca. The latter is a fanciful reimagining of, well, Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
The conventional wisdom is largely true with regard to the film’s inspirations, particularly the intersection of (Call Me by Your Name director) Luca Guadagnino’s visual flair and Miyazaki’s trademark whimsy. It’s also correct about its aspirations. Luca is firmly, if not proudly, second-tier Pixar. This is not to say the film swings big and misses. Quite the opposite, actually. Luca contains no grandiose premise, in the manner of Inside Out, Coco or Soul. It doesn’t present a wildly different version of reality, as seen in The Incredibles or Wall-E. And it never seeks to match the emotional wallop of Up, Finding Nemo or the Toy Story franchise. Those films were, after all, marketed to kids, but made for adults. Luca is unapologetically a children’s movie through and through. Its tropes are instantly familiar, if not a bit threadbare. And yet, director Enrico Casarosa (who previously helmed the Pixar short La Luna) thrives within these constraints.
The premise here is one of Pixar’s simplest: Luca is a literal fish-out-of-water story. The title character (voiced by Jacob Tremblay of Room fame) is a sea monster – or is it mer-boy? – who escapes his ho-hum underwater life as a fish shepherd, and his mildly overbearing parents (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan), to explore the wonders of surface living. Thanks to the strange biology of this world, he seeks no bum deal with Ursula to alter appearances. His species automatically morphs into human form when fully dry, and reverts right back with the slightest splash of water.
At first, Luca absconds to a tiny island, where he meets the carefree Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), another runaway sea kid in disguise. They become fast friends and, eventually, partners in crime. The boys soon abandon their craggy refuge for the nearby coastal town of Portorosso, where the two have to blend in with a maritime community obsessed with capturing one of their mythical kind. A hefty bounty has been placed on their scaly heads.
Luca and Alberto’s ultimate goal – procure a Vespa and hit the road – is about as low-stakes as they come. It just so happens that the money needed to buy that scooter is the grand prize of an upcoming triathlon, which consists of swimming, cycling and pasta eating. (Hey, it’s Italy!) With the help of a whip-smart local girl named Giulia (Emma Berman) and her fisherman father Massimo (Marco Barricelli), they train for the competition and discover the highs and lows of being human. All the while, a preening bully (Saverio Raimondo) and Luca’s worried parents threaten to frustrate our duo’s best-laid plans. Hijinks ensue.
Nothing about Luca remotely approaches the grand, existential themes of Pixar’s signature films. This is merely a fable about kindred spirits, a celebration of authenticity, a love letter seemingly brought to us by the Italian tourism board. As reality veers closer and closer to Toy Story 3’s incinerator sequence and Finding Nemo’s barracuda attack, Luca offers lovely counterprogramming, a heaping bowl of pesto pappardelle for the tattered soul.
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