Luca
Director: Enrico Casarosa
Writer: Enrico Casarosa, Simon Stephenson, Jesse Andrews, Mike Jones
Starring: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Grazer, Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph (hey! the first name I can recognize here), Marco Barricelli, Jim Gaffigan (what’s the donut comedian doing here?)
Reason for watching: It’s Pixar, man. What did I was gonna do? Skip it? I see I EVERRRYYYTHING!!
Number of times I’ve watched it: first time viewing
***
EVERYBODY STOP WITH THE COMPARISONS TO Call Me By Your Name!!!! You see two movies based in Italy and all of a sudden they’re the same thing??!!??!?! Why do we still talk about that movie? It’s a pedophilic story (not in Italy, but I don’t have to agree with their BS laws). ARMIE HAMMER HAS CANNIBAL FANTASIES PEOPLE!!!! There’s only so much that Timothee Chalemet can do to distract us from those two really big detractors. Now. I was gonna talk about this nice Pixar entry before I so rudely interrupted myself!
Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is a young merman who shepherds his parents’ (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) fish flock just off the Italian coast. But after discovering human items on the ocean floor, Luca dreams of going up where they walk, up where they run, up where they stay all day in the sun. But his parents warn him against the changing, a process where a merperson can turn into a human just by going on dry land. It’s just his luck that he meets Alberto (Jack Grazer), another young merman who lives an abandoned tower on a small island. They become fast friends as they spend their days building makeshift Vespas, swimming, and thinking about what humans are really like. Unfortunately, Luca’s parents discover his on-land activities and prepare to ship him off to live in the deep sea with his uncle. (I’m not kidding about the Vespa thing, they are obsessed with them. And their only reference point for what they look like is a poster Alberto found in the ocean.) However, Luca and Alberto decide to take their chances in the nearby coastal town of Portorosso. They meet Giulia (Emma Berman), who quickly befriends them without knowing their merperson nature. At the promise of some prize money, the three of them begin training for a triathlon where they could potentially win enough money to buy their own Vespa. But they run into trouble as Luca’s parents go searching for him, the truth about Alberto’s parents come out, and both Luca and Alberto try to keep their true nature secret.
Whew! That was a lot of setup. Hopefully, it wasn’t too much. But I really enjoyed this movie! Its stakes are so low and the characters are so innocent in their intentions, that I can’t help but just enjoy myself. It’s taxing when every movie is about the end of the world or a life-changing event. Even Pixar does this now. Toy Story 3 is about Andy giving up his most prized toys and being willing to close the door on a chapter of his life. Cars is about winning a sports championship (where Chicks Hicks basically got away with attempted murder). The Incredibles and its sequel are both about saving a city from a huge attack that would’ve killed hundreds of people! It gets tiresome to get my hopes so high and get attached to these characters. So a story that’s basically just about young people making friends and having fun while trying to scrape together enough money to buy a Vespa is a breath of fresh air. Sometimes you need a salad when you eat. Not every meal has to be a huge steak.
We have some fun humor here as well. You’ve got the grizzled fisherman dad with some deadpan humor (hey wait a minute, I’ve seen that before). You have literal fish out of water jokes with Luca and Alberto constantly avoiding getting wet and more metaphorical jokes with the two of them not understanding basic human interactions. There’s good emotional growth as well with the young kids learning what it means to be a friend and how their natural curiosity about the world grows too.
Ultimately, this whole movie comes down to simplicity. It’s not ground-breaking. It’s not the emotionally heart-strings-being-pulled movie. It’s just a good story about some friends competing in a triathlon and learning to acclimate themselves to a new world. So sit down for 90 minutes and enjoy it with your kids.
8/10
Until I see another one
PS - the more apt comparison here is The Little Mermaid.