‘Luca’ review: A bi-species Italian Riviera vacation from Disney Pixar
Running a brisk 84 minutes, not counting the beguiling end credits, the Italian Riviera-set “Luca” marks Pixar Animation Studios’ first direct-to-streaming offering. Before the pandemic, I’d have said this was the right medium-good diversion for a Disney+ premiere. But now? Theatrical-only releases, despite successes such as “A Quiet Place Part II,” may soon be as rare as mermaids or mermenon land.
And there’s your premise. Young Luca, voiced by Jacob Tremblay of “Room,” is a sea creature, a shepherd — guppies, not sheep — living underwater with his watchful mother (Maya Rudolph), diffident father (Jim Gaffigan), secret-ally grandmother (Sandy Martin) and assorted finned and gilled neighbors.
Up above among the “land monsters,” also known as humans, rumors of sea beasts persist among the seaside villagers of Portorosso. In the world of “Luca,” unbeknownst to the human population, sea dwellers magically transform into human form once they leave the water. A splash or a sudden cloudburst takes them back to scales-and-tails form. Like Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” or Remy (the rat) in the masterwork “Ratatouille,” Luca yearns to expand his horizons despite unthinking, hostile prejudice against their kind. Venturing toward his first adventure on land, Luca befriends a brash but lonely fellow sea creature, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer of “It”), who lives two lives, one under and one above water, on a small island near the coast.
The script by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones sets up a fast if precarious friendship for these two. Alberto, a collector of human junk ranging from an old Victrola to pictures of his dream possession, a Vespa, thinks he’s found a pal for life. Enter one of the convenient story complications, Giulia (Emma Berman), the daughter of a fisherman. She longs to win the town’s competitive triathalon and put the bullying, swaggering Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo) in his place.
Like so many Pixar and Disney storylines, this one trades heavily in unquestioned traditions vs. the power of outsiders banding together. A decade ago, director Enrico Casarosa made the short film “La Luna.” Here he’s dealing in a distant Italianate cousin to that magical world, albeit one more crowded with familiar tropes and conflicts. The inevitable mid-story rift between Luca and Alberto, the nagging unpleasantness of Ercole and his henchboys: These impart an uneasy feeling, and lack real freshness or wit. The movie is more about scooting through and around its own obstacles en route to the next set.
There is, however, just enough atmospheric detail and, in the final lap, enough genuine feeling in the thorny friendships to make it worth seeing. Giulia’s father’s cat (named Machiavelli) is a triumph of feline animation, sporting a wee swarthy moustache and a constant air of justified suspicion. The score interpolates Puccini and Rossini, and Alberto refers to the Victrola as the “magic singing lady machine.” Posters for Fellini’s “La Strada” and photographs of Marcello Mastroianni pepper the visual landscape. The village itself is partly inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s “Porco Rosso” and the real-world cliffside amazements of Monterosso al Mare and other towns along the Italian Riviera’s Cinque Terre.
Some of these details will mean something to some viewers, and a lot of them won’t mean anything to kids — although any flourish that helps an audience more fully enter a story is worth the trouble. On a personal note, I’d like to thank director Casarosa for playing a bit of “Un Bacio A Mezzanotte” (“A Kiss at Midnight”) under the opening credits. The song was new to me yesterday, and I’ve only replayed it 170 times since.
Most of the humor and some of the menace in “Luca” feels a little DreamWorks-y, and the animation style settles for an artful if standard-issue blend of photorealistic beaches and doe-eyed character faces. Anything I have to say about the look and the priorities of “Luca” would assuredly not help its box office returns; then again, with this movie, there is no box office — simply another line item in the Great Disney Streaming Algorithm. Nonetheless: Upon the arrival of the marvelously retro end-credit illustrations by Nicolle Castro and Matthias De Clercq, something happens. A pretty good Pixar entry suddenly acquires some real flair. I wish the whole movie had taken that sort of line-drawing approach.
“Luca” speaks directly to the matter of raising kids who aren’t living their parents’ lives. One particular bit of dialogue, spoken by the grandmother, risks being on the nose instead of nose-adjacent, but it works anyway. “Some people, they’ll never accept him,” she says of her grandson, who chooses the immigrant’s life and a whole new world. “But some will. And he seems to know how to find the good ones.”
‘Luca’ — 3 stars
MPAA rating: PG (for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence)
Running time: 1:35
Where to watch: Streaming Fri. June 18 on Disney+.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
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