Luca (2021, PG)

I didn’t get to this one when it first came out, but I’m finally coming back around to it now. While I wouldn’t put it with the best that Pixar has to offer, it’s a fun animated film with a lot of imagination and sweet relationships at its core.

For a sea monster like Luca, the “land monsters” driving their boats across the surface overhead are a source of both fascination and fear. His parents don’t mince words about the deadly danger of the surface, but like Ariel before him, Luca is intrigued by human objects that find their way into the sea. When he meets, Alberto, a brash, friendly young sea monster who’s obsessed with the human world, Luca’s curiosity pulls him out of the water. They can appear human as long as they don’t get wet, and their adventure takes them to a fishing village, where they make a new friend but fear what will happen if she learns who they really are.

This isn’t the first movie to do a flipped “scary creature” narrative, where humans are just as frightening as the monsters that have traditionally been cast as the baddies in our stories. I think of Monsters Inc., where all the monsters are freaked out by Boo, or Planet 51, which is about an alien planet that’s “invaded” by a human astronaut. Throw in the not-so-subtle parallels to The Little Mermaid, complete with jokes about a sea creature’s love for human knickknacks they don’t understand and a sequence of a sea creature with a newly human body learning to walk, and it’s clear we’re treading a lot of familiar territory.

But even if it offers a variation on a few different themes, the movie itself is still entertaining. I really enjoy the growing friendship between Luca, Alberto, and Giulia, the human girl they meet in the village. The three team up to train for the Porto Rosso Cup, an annual event that Giulia is obsessed with winning—meanwhile the boys, who dream of vespas, are equally invested when they realize that the prize money could be used to buy a vespa of their very own. As they all get to know each other over a whirlwind summer friendship, they have a lot of fun, grow close and then realize that doing so puts their feelings at risk, and teach each other about everything from life and loyalty to bike riding and pasta twirling.

The animation is lovely, mixing the slightly ramshackle but still picturesque scenes of the village with the vibrant colors and whimsy of the sea monsters and their underwater world. The story plays off of some familiar beats and at times feels a little overstuffed, but the emotion between the characters always rings true.

Jacob Tremblay does a fine job as Luca, a jittery, earnest kid who’s opening his heart to a wider world even as it scares him. As Alberto, Jack Dylan Grazer is all confidence, bravado, and enthusiasm. I get a kick out of the self-assurance he brings to everything he does, from reassuring Luca that he “basically invented” walking to claiming that he once touched the moon (“It felt like a fish.”) Emma Berman brings an excitable energy to Giulia. She’s someone who’s often been told she’s “too much,” but with Luca and Alberto, she feels like she doesn’t need to hold back. The cast is rounded up by Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan as Luca’s parents and Marco Barricelli as Giulia’s dad, and Sacha Baron Cohen makes a very appearance as well.

Warnings

A few scary moments for kids, a lot of “don’t try this at home” (do not build a vespa out of scraps and then ride it down a monstrously steep hill toward a rickety ramp that’s being propped up by a turtle,) and thematic elements.