Luca

Pixar has been reli­ably putting out sol­id tear­jerk­ers for a few decades now. Tout­ed as kids ani­ma­tion for adults because of the studio’s ten­den­cy to split their films between wacky car­toon per­il for the lit­tle ones and heavy-hand­ed exis­ten­tial­ism for their chap­er­ones, the win­ning for­mu­la has start­ed to feel a lit­tle safe and predictable.

Even their more recent major works, such as the Pete Doc­ter-direct­ed trio of Up, Inside Out and Soul, only man­age to divide them­selves between these mul­ti­ple tones rather than ful­ly thread­ing them togeth­er, as though there’s not enough pro­fun­di­ty in child­ish antics and not enough excite­ment in big­ger ques­tions or more abstract visu­als. After see­ing oth­er world-renowned ani­ma­tion hous­es strike that bal­ance for so long, it has become frus­trat­ing to see Pixar con­tin­u­al­ly lack trust in its pri­ma­ry audiences.

Thank­ful­ly, Luca, the fea­ture-length direc­to­r­i­al debut of Enri­co Casarosa (pre­vi­ous­ly a sto­ry lead on The Good Dinosaur and sto­ry artist on Coco), feels like a break from tra­di­tion. The film focus­es square­ly on the rela­tion­ship between fel­low sea mon­sters Luca and Alber­to (voiced by Jack Dylan Graz­er, great­ly amus­ing in his false con­fi­dence) as they explore the human world, becom­ing obsessed with the idea of buy­ing their own Vespa.

It’s not as dizzy­ing­ly imag­i­na­tive or as play­ful as Soul – not at first any­way – but the hum­ble­ness of Luca works in its favour. Both films strive to find joy in life’s mun­dan­i­ties, adopt­ing the point of view of an out­sider fas­ci­nat­ed by the human world that we take for grant­ed. A lot of Luca is just kids let­ting their imag­i­na­tions and cute mis­con­cep­tions run wild, and through that the film cre­ates an authen­tic emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. It’s like if both pro­tag­o­nists in Ponyo were Ponyo.

The film’s most out­landish visu­als come from these flights of fan­cy, the ani­ma­tors emu­lat­ing Luca’s cob­bled-togeth­er impres­sions of human­i­ty. Luca also visu­al­ly sets itself apart through its gan­g­ly, tac­tile, almost Aard­man-esque char­ac­ter designs. In addi­tion to the lov­ing atten­tion to detail on dis­play, Casarosa vivid­ly imag­ines his home coun­try through the title character’s wide, round­ed eyes.

Co-writ­ten by Soul co-writer Mike Jones and ​‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’ author Jesse Andrews, there are some sim­i­lar­i­ties to each writer’s pre­vi­ous work – but Casarosa’s warm, nos­tal­gic vision over­rides every­thing else, veer­ing away from the story’s inher­ent per­il to lux­u­ri­ate in the fic­tion­al sea­side town of Portorosso.

The director’s love for this set­ting – a port­man­teau of var­i­ous Ital­ian coastal towns as well as a ref­er­ence to Stu­dio Ghi­b­li – is evi­dent every­where, to the point where Luca feels like a tourism ad for a town that doesn’t exist. From the lush palette to sil­ly inci­den­tal dia­logue (var­i­ous Ital­ian foods replac­ing what would be swear words in sen­tences), this is Pixar’s most infec­tious­ly charm­ing film in years, espe­cial­ly once the two boys begin to inte­grate them­selves into the town.

There is some­thing of a strange ten­sion between the even­tu­al life-and-death stakes and the director’s desire for a more laid back film, yet while it may fall into con­ven­tion­al Pixar ter­ri­to­ry at times, Luca is ulti­mate­ly a fun­ny and sweet diver­sion from the studio’s more over­stuffed efforts.