Luca (2021 | USA | 95 minutes | Enrico Casarosa)
More than two decades since Disney made a smash hit with The Little Mermaid, Pixar is taking their swing at a tale of lonely undersea youth with dreams of exploring life on the other side of the water’s edge. In place of a thingamabob-collecting mermaid princess who becomes infatuated with a two-legged prince and gets caught up in an scary manipulative witch’s plot, Luca introduces a shy, obedient, tweenage sea-monster who forms an intense friendship with a boisterous older kid who fosters a shared obsession with a shiny red Vespa and making a new life for themselves in the idyllic pastel-hued coastal villages of the Italian Riviera. Luca is unlikely to challenge the now-classic fever-pitched musical fairy tale for supremacy in the Disney+ Infinite Celestial Videobox, but it’s wonderful that there’s room for this kind of charming, breezy, and winning summer fling.
After a brief prologue, we meet Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay, who via Room has more than a passing familiarity with playing a sheltered youth with a dedicated and over-protective mother) as he’s tending to the family’s flock of fish. He and his insular community of “sea monsters” inhabit the quiet undersea territory surrounding an island believed by the local anchovy fisherman to be the dangerous realm of vicious creatures who lurk below the surface. They’re half-right; the glitteringly clear azure waters are inhabited by deft swimming swimming with cool-toned skin and leafy iridescent scales in place of hair (think the Shape of Water, except far cuter and with long prehensile tails), but Luca and his family (parents voiced by Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) are the opposite of vicious. They cower at any sign of “land monsters” and stick to the self-preservation mantra “the curious get caught”.
Although young Luca occasionally dreams of life beyond the peaceful hamlet and sun-dappled waters, he’s a good kid who diligently follows his loving parents’ advice. It’s not until he stumbles across some detritus from the human world and encounters an artifact-collecting deep sea diver that he finally breaches the surface. It’s here that he meets Alberto (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer, who, via Luca Guadagnino’s exceptional and underseen We Are Who We Are has some recent experience playing a teenager in Italy who covers his loneliness with false bravado), an island-dwelling older kid who turns out to be a sea monster just like him. In a longer or different movie, the trauma of going from sea to land might be drawn out and over-explained. Here, though, it’s an instantaneous transformation from wide-eyed adorable fish people, to wide-eyed cute kids with great haircuts (it’s probably not too much of a stretch to see Luca’s wavy human locks as ever-so-slightly Chalamet-eseque). Sure, it takes a few comedic minutes for Luca get used to things like gravity, but overall the mechanics are refreshingly simple — wet = sea creature; dry = teen boy — which keeps the film easy to follow and allows it to move at a sprightly pace.
Alberto’s life is far less supervised than Luca and he cobbled together some interesting expertise about the ways human world. Luca’s immediately intrigued and soon spends more and more time sneaking away from home so that they can get up to all sort of hijinks like flinging themselves off of cliffs, testing the shaky limits of their bravery, and wiling away long days dreaming of adventures, mostly centered around touring the countryside together on a Vespa. It’s this near-instantaneous friendship, and the affection that develops between these two previously isolated boys (sea-lads? mer-teens?) that draws Luca away from his family and provides the catalyst for their ill-advised getaway to the nearby human town of Portorosso.
Aside from the fountain in the center square celebrating a sea-monster hunter, the pastel hued little village is inviting place to visit. Everyone’s friendly, there’s gelato for sale on every corner, and most-interestingly to Alberto and Luca: real life Vespas zipping up and down the charming cobblestone streets. There, the boys befriend another adventurous underdog (Giulia, voiced by Emma Berman) who offers them a place to stay and spots on her team in the summer’s annual triathlon (where, amusingly, eating the Ligurian region’s famed pesto pasta is swapped in for the running portion). While they have to keep their true identities a secret by staying dry, avoiding the glares of their friend’s suspicious cat, and playing it cool around her giant, gruff, one-armed fisherman father, the action is largely amusing and low-stakes. The big bads are essentially “unexpectedly encountering water” and the rich, Vespa-driving, town snob who’s way too old to be lording over these younger kids.
It’s a Pixar film; so of course everything from the undersea environment to the postcard-worthy town is beautifully rendered with loving detail and a timeless feeling. But, unlike some of their films, the visual effects team has allowed a sense of playfulness to the computer-animation, which forgoes pure photorealism and steers the human(oids) clear of the uncanny valley. In its place, a welcome sense of cartoonish whimsy invites investment in the trials and tribulations of the fish-out-of-water duo as they train for the big race, avoid detection, and find their friendship tested. Although the setup is a classic love triangle, the story steers refreshing steers clear of that cliche, with primary dramatic force being the heady romance of new friendship (bring your own subtext) versus the pull of family and a draw toward self-actualization. Along the way the comedy sparkles with plenty of cute sight gags, funny cameos, and a setup that finds grown adults finding creative ways to dunk little kids with water. Something for everyone, truly.
Director Enrico Casarosa grew up in nearby Genoa; so he and the production team bring an insider’s sense of authenticity to the setting. Like many an American, I have followed Rick Steves’s advice and visited the Cinque Terre; so this town feeling like a dreamlike amalgamation of those dizzyingly charming towns on the Italian Riviera instantly gave the film a warm glow of nostalgia and wanderlust. It might be a shortcut, but it was an incredibly effective one. By the end of a refreshingly slim hour and a half, the old Pixar magic still worked and I found myself moved by the human scale drama of finding a friend whose oddities complement your own angles, overcoming inherent caution to try fun dumb stuff, surviving a trip to Italy while maintaining a vegetarian diet, and worrying about what people will think when they find out who you actually are. Its a sweet story, loving realized. Like the best vacations, Luca was a trip filled with pleasant surprises and one that I’m eager to revisit.
Luca arrives on Disney+ on June 18th.