By Rubén Rosario,
As warm and balmy as a June breeze, LUCA, Disney/Pixar’s would-be summertime multiplex idyll, reconfigures Italian culture as comfort-food escapism. It tells a whimsical coming-of-age story served up in kid-friendly bite-size pieces, driven by a pair of non-threatening sea monsters in their early teens who find in each other a support system and a shelter from hostile forces.
But don’t be deceived by its gentle demeanor or lulled into an unquestioning stupor by its sun-baked color palette or storybook trappings, because, underneath its placid surface, the feature debut of Pixar vet Enrico Casarosa conceals some stinging truths about the evolving nature of friendship: how transformative it can be, and how it could all unravel if both parties are not careful.
Transformative is the key word here, since this handsomely designed production, like the seafaring myths it plunders for inspiration, focuses on a titular lonesome creature who, unbeknownst to him, can take on a much different form out of the Italian Riviera waters. Luca Paguro, voiced by ROOM’s Jacob Tremblay, tends to a school of fish like a shepherd to his flock, a numbing, soul-sucking state of affairs for the 13-year-old. Like Ariel and Nemo before him, our gill-eared protagonist is fascinated by the world above the surface, a realm that his worrywart mom Daniela (Maya Rudolph) warns is off-limits to him, filled with beings she describes as barbaric fish eaters. To them, the humans are the monsters.
Cue the Pixar formula, which promptly clicks into place to send young, curious Luca up above and face to face with Alberto Scorfano (Jack Dylan Grazer), a standoffish scavenger who works overtime in coming across as worldly and above it all. Luca, whose crippling fear of the unknown is reminiscent of THE GOOD DINOSAUR’s Arlo, is terrified by this human with frizzy hair … who turns out to be a shapeshifting sea monster who can turn into a boy and back again. Just. Like. Him.
Here’s where the sense of wonder that made LA LUNA, Casarosa’s Oscar-nominated short, so magical, could have come in handy. But magic is in short supply in LUCA. Casarosa handles his title character’s voyage of discovery after he realizes he looks like a wavy-haired wide-eyed boy when he’s dry, with matter-of-fact simplicity. Its straightforward, no-frills narrative, a throwback to Pixar’s 1990s and early 2000s body of work, is as much an asset as it is a limitation here. The way Luca and Alberto’s bond blossoms, for instance, feels particularly threadbare, despite a commendable refusal to sand off their hang-ups and shortcomings. Despite its literally multifaceted central characters, what you see is for the most part what you get.
That becomes even more apparent when the boys, obsessed with getting their fins, er, hands-on a Vespa, venture to the town of Portorosso (a tip of the hat to Hayao Miyazaki’s PORCO ROSSO?) and befriend Giulia (Emma Berman), a girl who’s determined to win the Portorosso Cup, the town’s annual triathlon, which ends with a challenging bicycle race and includes a pasta eating portion. (The food porn on display is consistently mouthwatering.) Giulia’s biggest obstacle is Ercole (comedian Saverio Raimondo), the town bully, who puts Luca and Alberto in his crosshairs when he suspects something is off about the new arrivals.
In order to sustain the charade that Luca and Alberto are human, Casarosa, working from a screenplay by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, asks for a sizable suspension of disbelief. The filmmakers attempt to generate suspense by placing the characters in situations where the threat of getting wet, and thus outing them as sea creatures, hangs above them, but all too often they manage to dry up conveniently quickly, even when you sense that they wouldn’t be able to do so. Like several of the film’s fanciful conceits, such details can’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Even more confounding is the film’s willingness to place Alberto under the bus. His guarded reserve gives way to jealousy when he notices the more intellectually inclined Luca and Giulia become friends. Let’s back up for a second. The film’s teaser trailer, released on Feb. 25, appeared to hint at the possibility of a budding romance between the boys, Pixar’s potentially watershed answer to CALL ME BY YOUR NAME if you will. Then Casarosa waited two whole months before making the rather deflating clarification, in an Entertainment Weekly interview, that the young boys/sea monsters’ bond is strictly fraternal. All well and good, I guess, only the movie keeps reminding you of the poignant tale of puppy love it could have been, never more so than in its depiction of Alberto’s jealousy. Since it’s not driven by a lover’s possessive instinct, his territorial anger here rings hollow, essentially reduced to a cog moving the plot along. The movie keeps stressing how Alberto pretends not to care, how he uses that armor as a defense mechanism, but it’s the film that’s hiding behind that shield as a way to refrain from delving into deeper waters.
Also underdeveloped is the townsfolk’s fear of sea creatures. It’s a threat that remains vaguely defined. Think of Disney’s 1991 “Beauty and the Beast” if it didn’t include “The Mob Song,” what the villagers sing as they grab pitchforks and march to the Beast’s castle. It’s a gap that needed to be filled in order to convey the risks the boys are taking in visiting Portorosso.
But just when you fear LUCA will self-destruct because of its implausibilities and wispy narrative, Casarosa and his creative team come back strong with a third act that builds to a resolution so satisfying, you wish the rest of the movie had been just as solid. It also drives home its central “coming out” metaphor as a plea for, not just tolerance, but full acceptance, making Casarosa’s decision to withhold the love story even more of a missed opportunity. (And, not to point out the obvious, but the studio is releasing the film during Pride Month.) But that reticence can’t dampen the bittersweet pull that gives the film’s ending such an unexpected potency.
It’s all aided by the movie’s timeless look, which extends to the characters’ claymation-like features, as well as BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD composer Dan Romer’s lush and melodic score, which does a lot of the heavy lifting here, especially when the narrative comes across as a daydream that pops into your head when you’ve been out in the sun too long. It amounts to a pleasant diversion, one that should have been available to U.S. moviegoers and not just relegated to Disney Plus’ lineup. It overcomes a tide of stumbling blocks, even as it makes crystal clear a need for the training wheels to come off when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation. Enough baby steps, Pixar folks. It’s way past time to take the plunge. Come on in. The water’s fine.
The Verdict: