Title: Luca Year: 2021 Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family, Adventure, Fantasy Country: USA Language: English, Italian Director: Enrico Casarosa Screenwriters: Jesse Andrews, Mike Jones based on the story by Enrico Casarosa, Jesse Andrews and Simon Stephenson Music: Dan Romer Cinematography: David Juan Bianchi, Kim White Editing: Catherine Apple, Jason Hudak Voice Cast: Jacob Tremblay Jack Dylan Grazer Emma Berman Saverio Raimondo Maya Rudolph Marco Barricelli Jim Gaffigan Sacha Baron Cohen Peter Sohn Marina Massironi Sandy Martin Rating: 7.7/10
After having earned a veritable Teflon prestige, Pixar studio’s latest flick LUCA whisks audience to a luscious Italian Riviera, directed by Enrico Casarosa, his first feature film, it inherits the studio’s sagacious and heuristic tenor, it tells a coming-of-age story of Luca (Tremblay), who belongs to a species of mythical sea creature which can turn into a human form when they’re ashore, but reveals their true self when they contact water. Here, the message can be either interpreted as a subtle coming-out metaphor (something that mainstream cinema struggling to represent in the dead center) or read as an effusive encomium of friendship between two prepubescent boys. Either way, LUCA is as anodyne as crowd-pleasing, if its oceanic scenery cannot surpass FINDING DORY’s alluring pellucidity and ripple mobility, Casarosa and his team’s picturesque creation of the town called Portorosso is a sublime knockout, and their vibrant aesthetics are overtly influenced by the Studio Ghibli’s variegated coloration and hair-splitting attention to even the smallest details (the name Portorosso, “red harbor” itself is a homage to Miyazaki’s PORCO ROSSO, 1992), looking at that Italian pasta with pesto sauce and fresh basil leaves, how toothsome it could be! The characterization is well-crafted, if nothing veers too far away from a teenage’s wavelength, a loving but officious mother makes a good pair with a slaphappy father, no wonder a kid wants to rebel, a daffy grandma always knows the best, and a boy’s wound left by a missing father can be assuaged by another father figure. Luca and his fellow sea monster Alberto (Grazer)’s bromance blossoms organically (their mutual fantasy about peregrinating in a Vespa betrays that the story is set around 1960s or ‘70s), and the film astutely draws on the delicate feeling of jealousy, displeasure and betrayal when you realize your best friend is clicking with someone else. Only, the girl character, Giulia (Berman), a human girl, is less eventful because she still fits into the category of a spirited MPDG, it is a disservice that she unwittingly drives a wedge between Luca and Alberto, because as a matter of fact, girl of that age is acutely sensitive, her impressionable sensibility shouldn’t been erased for the sake of the boys’ development. So when all is said and done, LUCA diligently charts through the fickleness and wonderment of boyhood and sends out a heartwarming coda to reassure us all will be fine, nothing cosmically spectacular, but indubitably it is quite an eyeful and a heart-string puller. One minor gripe, the age of LUCA’s core demography could be pitched a shade older since audience has all been conditioned to expect something more than kids-friendly from Pixar, that may also account for its less enthusiastic reception, it is unable to hold a candle to COCO (2017) or SOUL (2020). referential entries: Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane’s FINDING DORY (2016, 7.8/10); Yoshifumi Kondô’s WHISPER OF THE HEART (1995, 8.2/10).
Cinema Omnivore 