OVP: Luca (2021)

Film: Luca (2021)

Stars: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, Marco Barricelli, Maya Rudolph, Sacha Baron Cohen

Director: Enrico Casarosa

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Luca has become one of the topics of the summer that I've honestly been the most intrigued by.  First off, it had a bizarre release schedule.  Pixar, once the crown jewel in Disney's arsenal, was relegated to the same sort of sendoff that greeted Artemis Fowl and The One and Only Ivan, not only not getting a theatrical release, but basically being the only one of Disney's major releases in 2021 to go that route.  With Pixar lacking a lot of upcoming titles (other than Turning Red and the long-rumored Lightyear), there's not a lot on its plate, which has to be worrisome to fans of the studio, particularly after Disney unceremoniously dumped BlueSky Animation in the dumpster (despite them having a movie, Nimona, on-deck)-one has to wonder if Pixar is about to be relegated as a "straight-to-streaming" studio.  We don't have answers to that, but if Luca is any indication, Pixar becoming the forgotten stepchild at the Mouse House would be a darn shame.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the late-1950's, where two young sea monsters named Luca (Tremblay) and Alberto (Grazer) take very different attitudes to a strange abnormality about their lives.  It turns out that if they are out of water, they look in appearance just like young human boys, and only water makes them resume their monster looks.  They spend the summer relaxing & tangentially getting involved with the human world, but when Luca's parents find out what he's been doing they decide to send him to live with his strange uncle Ugo (Cohen), so he runs away and lives indefinitely with the humans & Alberto on land, befriending Giulia (Berman), a girl determined to win a local cycling race against Ercole Visconti (Raimondo), the town bully.  The boys spend much of the summer both helping Giulia, with Luca slowly replacing Alberto with her as his best friend, and becoming enamored with human life, all the while Luca's parents are trying to find him.  The film ends in a bittersweet moment-both boys are found out while they're trying to help Giulia win the race, but they are then separated.  Luca gets to go to school with Giulia, leaving behind Alberto, to whom he is forever indebted.

The movie is, in the long run of Pixar, somewhat slight on plot.  It's gorgeous (the sun-dappled Italian villas & coastlines were meant for the big screen), but you get the sense that Disney knew what it was doing in pushing this to streaming.  In a similar fashion to Soul, it's not a movie that automatically screams "commercial," even if Luca is much more for children than Soul ever was.  Other than the code-switching (more in a second), this is a pretty two-dimensional worldview.  It's sweet, but it's a reminder that Pixar doesn't just make movies for nostalgic parents-their primary audience is children.  I don't think that's a criticism that this isn't some larger testimony on life, but it is a sign that the movie probably won't be recalled in the same beloved breath as WALL-E or Ratatouille in the future.

The movie's most noted aspect is that it's, well, pretty gay.  The boys can easily be read as at least hinting at a romantic relationship (particularly Alberto for Luca), and the ending isn't shy about showing that even if there's no actual mention of sexuality.  The boys realizing that they need to move on, that their "friendship" won't survive to adulthood in the same youthful way...it's pretty poignant stuff, and feels oddly reminiscent of the much more grownup (and more blatantly homosexual) Call Me By Your Name, with the title character even bearing the first name of that film's director (who has worked with Jack Dylan Grazer on We Are Who We Are).  This would've been a genuinely cool moment for Disney to perhaps open up a gay character.  While the film has been released in China (thus there was a modicum of box office dollars on the line), since it was a on a streaming platform it didn't have the same sort of parameters that a theatrical release would have had in terms of "family-friendly."  I know it was released too late for that to be practical, but I feel like that would've been a cool move for Disney, particularly as they figure out where Pixar sits in their studio realm in the future.