Mark Reviews Movies: LUCA

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 17, 2021

Too much of Luca feels slight. It's a beautiful-looking movie, for sure, but that's what we expect from Pixar. The whole team of artists and animators at that studio knows exactly what they're doing, so we're free to marvel at the lush and realistic backdrops, the level of detail that's put into textures and lighting, and the expressiveness of just about any character in this movie. There's a bit too much of that searching for the little touches here, because the foundational story gives us so many broad strokes.

In a way, that makes some sense. This sort-of-modern-day fairy tale is pure comedy, featuring a literal fish-out-of-water story, multiple pratfalls, plenty of errors and misunderstandings, and a climax revolving around a "traditional Italian triathlon" (swimming, cycling, and eating pasta—a good joke, to be certain).

The villain is a lanky, bumbling fop. A side plot involves a couple of sea monsters coming up with schemes to drench the kids of a seaside town in water, for reasons that will become apparent later. Our heroes just want to enjoy the fun things in a life of which they've only dreamed, so they hang out, create inventions, formulate a rather convoluted plan to obtain a motorized scooter, and end up in a lot of precarious situations. All the while, the young protagonists have to avoid water, lest anyone see that they aren't actually humans, but sea monsters—with scaly skin and a tail and fins arranged to look like particularly wavy hair.

That's the main gimmick of Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones' screenplay, which imagines a world of underwater mundanity, where sea monsters tend to schools of fish and live out a routine of pretty much nothing else. There's a strange absence of any real details to this undersea world, either by direct exposition or design, so the whole plot, really, doesn't have much grounding. Why do we care that Luca (voice of Jacob Tremblay), a young sea monster, wants to leave for the surface, when we have little understanding of the place from where he's escaping?

Let's just accept it, though. Luca, a shepherd of fish (Would that be a "fisherd"?), spends his days looking after his school (They all baa like sheep) and returning home for dinner with his parents Daniela (voice of Maya Rudolph) and Lorenzo (voice of Jim Gaffigan), before starting the whole process over again. One day, he spots some items from the surface world in the alcove where his fish graze.

They sank there on account of Alberto (voice of Jack Dylan Grazer), a rambunctious and rebellious teen of a sea monster, who regularly steals curios from the passing boats of fishermen. Alberto, a loner whose father left the kid behind for some reason, spends his time on the surface, where he's set up a little home in a collapsed stone tower. He dreams of traveling the world on a motorized scooter, and Luca thinks he could use some adventure, too. After failing to build a scooter out of scrap (There's a lengthy section of trial runs, which just seems to be delaying the whole story from progressing), the two, who transform into humans when they're dry, decide to swim to and spend some time in the nearby town on the shore.

On the one hand, the resulting plot, which has Luca and Alberto joining and training for a triathlon with the hopes of winning some prize money in order to buy a scooter, is kind of dull. On the other, it's just an excuse for Andrews, Jones, and director Enrico Casarosa (making his feature debut) to explore the other potential charms of this setup, these characters, and the assorted gags that might come from them.

It is charming, to be sure—but only to a point. The simplicity of the story allows some time for Luca, who's captivated by the possibility of learning everything he never knew about the world of land and beyond, and Alberto, whose devil-may-care attitude and stubbornness is just a cover for insecurity and feeling rejected, to endear themselves to us. Another fun character is Giulia (voice of Emma Berman), a feisty local—and truly human—girl, who wants to win the triathlon, even though she had some gastrological issues the last time she tried (all of that pasta, followed by an uphill bike ride).

The antagonist, animated with the same slithery quality that Saverio Raimondo brings to his vocal performance, wants to insult and sabotage the trio out of winning. Meanwhile, Daniela and Lorenzo come to the surface, looking for their son, realizing that human children mostly look alike, and shoving a bunch of kids into a fountain, hoping one of them will transform. The townsfolk, having spotted Alberto on one of his trips hunting for land junk, are hunting for sea monsters.

It's all presented with a bright and cheery look and tone (A telling stylistic quirk is how the characters' mouths face the camera, even when they're standing at profile), always amiable and rarely serious (Obviously, there's some conflict between the friends, but it's resolved quickly). Luca mainly exists to provide some jovial, cartoonish fun, and while it certainly does offer plenty of that, the whole affair is so shallow—in terms of these characters, story, and the movie's world-building—that its pleasures are slight and fleeting.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products