Luca (2021) Movie Review
Pixar is one of those studios that no matter if you dislike their movies, one has to admit that they have talent when it comes to making movies, it´s no surprise since Pixar has created many franchises that are iconic today. However, it´s been some time now that I feel that Pixar has lost a bit of its magic making films, it is not like their movies are bad or something but I feel that the quality bar is going down quite a bit, lately I feel that Pixar has no direction and they release movies hoping that maybe some of them will be a success, however, this time its most recent release left me wanting to watch more of them and it helped me to recover a little of that ¨magic¨ that I didn´t feel for a long time when I watched a movie from Pixar.
This film introduces us in a simple but effective way: Luca, one of the protagonists, is a shy and fearful boy, but who has the fantasy of one day traveling around the world, the thing is that he is a half-fish person, a resident of the deep sea, he lives with his family who restrict him from going to the surface because the people on the surface are evil beings. One day, Luca meets a boy of the same species but the opposite of him in personality, this character is called Alberto and without giving many details about the plot, the film is about what I just mentioned, Luca exploring the world of the surface thanks to Alberto. One thing I forgot to mention is whenever those people touch air from the surface they become in your average human, but when they touch water they become in these half-fish person.
I felt like a child watching this film, the feeling of adventure managed to stay with me, the innocence of children wanting to explore and grow as people is something that the film explores and is quite beautiful, the topic of friendship is something that is not left aside, we can watch how the friendship of the protagonists grows as time passes and they get experiences, being two characters so different in personality helps them to see two different visions of things through the film, this difference in their personalities makes them help each other since both can cover what the other is lacking, for example, Luca being a fearful boy doesn´t dare to risk too much, so Alberto motivates him to leave his comfort zone, on the other hand, Alberto is a boy who doesn´t think twice about doing things without considering the consequences, so someone like Luca helps him see a different vision of himself and grow as a person.
The imagination of children is something incredible, it is curious that with so little they can do great things, it is interesting how Luca and Alberto manage to build or do things that in the first instance they are not able to do but that thanks to their imagination they were able to solve. There is this girl in the film who for me is one of the protagonists, her name is Giulia and her addition to the story brings out interesting things about Luca and Alberto, in addition to the fact that Giulia herself is a very cool character that motivates Luca to learn more about the world and continue to grow as a person, on the other hand, the secondary characters are ok, they are competent and they achieve their goal as secondary characters, the character that could be considered as the "antagonist" is quite funny and charismatic without reaching the point of having to humiliate him to cause laughs to the viewer.
This film is based on the fact that the protagonists can´t be touched by the water since they will reveal their true form that could scare the beings on the surface, although it sounds a bit negative the fact that they cannot show what they are really like, it´s actually quite funny and interesting the dynamic of keeping their identity hidden, since many times in the film the water will chase after the protagonists and watching how they are almost caught by the people on the surface manages to be fun, in addition, all this conflict that they can´t show their true identity is dealt later in a more serious way. I have to say that at the comedy level the movie made me laugh a lot of times, the jokes are creative and they are mostly funny, the best of all is that they are not stupid jokes about farts or things like that, they have their own grace and as I mentioned before, as far as it's funny they tend to be creative.
I must say that at first I didn´t feel satisfied with the characters design, they seemed bland and generic, although the more the film passed, the more I ended up used to it and not giving much importance to that matter, right now the design doesn´t seem so generic to me as before, it still seems somewhat simplistic to me though, what cannot be denied to this film is that it looks beautiful, the animation doesn´t stop surprising us even in 2021 because it continues to have technical advances, Pixar or Disney films have usually a good budget but lately I feel that the level of attention to detail that these films have is amazing, details like the lighting are splendid, as well as the shadows or refractions of the water, everything looks great. The recreation that was inspired from Italy is very well achieved, not only because of the buildings, but also because of the people´s culture, the way they communicate each other and they insert Italian words from time to time is great.
I don´t think that Luca is a masterpiece, instead a very good Pixar film that is at the level which I appreciate a lot since I haven´t watched something from Pixar that has really made me feel satisfied from a long time, I consider that it´s an step fordward and Luca sincerely motivates me to continue watch movies that Pixar will release in the future, a pity that Disney didn´t make a great marketing, I hope it does well. On a technical level Luca doesn´t disappoint and neither does it on a narrative level, simple but it manages to be competent and effective with whanever wants to show, the characters are credible and the friendship that is managed between the protagonists is beautiful and in general terms, watching Luca has been a very good experience.
