Looking at "Luca"

Hello everyone!

I'm glad to share that my Second Child safely arrived and that we've all been settling into our lives together at home for a few weeks.  As with my last parental leave, I've had a nice amount of time to hang out with the baby and watch movies, which is delightful.  And also as with my last parental leave, the hands-free and brain-free time I have is humblingly limited.  I'm going to do my best to write as quickly as I can to ensure I write at least one thing this month.  I'm hoping to write more than that because there are several movies I'd like to comment on, but of course how that goes isn't entirely or even majority up to me.

Let's talk about "Luca" (2021).

I have several observations!  In no particular order because truly I don't know that I have the time to organize my thoughts coherently:

First of all, the animation of the Mediterranean landscape in "Luca" is arrestingly beautiful.  This stands in somewhat odd contrast to the rendering of the characters, who have a stridently cartoony--almost clamation-like--appearance.  When it's clear that some poor Pixar staffers almost certainly lost possibly hundreds of hours of sleep rendering hyper-realistic and stunningly gorgeous sea foam and giant, intoxicatingly fluffy clouds, it's hard to understand the choice to depict the characters in the film as so stylized.  It's like two separate teams of animators got very different art direction while making this film.

It's very possible and likely that I've become extra sensitized to the potentially negative attributes of children's media now that my oldest Child is at an age where we'll allow at least some tv and movie time, but even without being a parent I think I would have been struck by some of the darker elements in "Luca" in part because they seem so unnecessary.  Why is this film so violent, sad, and scary?

Some examples to illustrate my point:

• One recurring joke involves characters jumping from a tall building for fun and proclaiming, “Take me gravity!”  They then plummet through a tree (which I guess we're supposed to assume mitigates their fall) and land in a slapstick manner, totally unharmed.  I realize this makes me a bit of a wet blanket, but seriously: isn't this quite dangerous to show little kids??  Could we not??
• Uncle Ugo is TERRIFYING.  Why is he so terrifying?  And why does Luca need to punch him in the chest to restart his heart??  WHAT??

• There's a decent amount of physical fighting that I found affronting.  Can we not model hitting people for children?  We can show that the villain is menacing in other ways, right?  We can show that friends disagree without coming to blows, right?
• My beef with the portrayal of physical conflict doesn't even include the omnipresent possibly lethal threat of violence against the Luca, Alberto, and other "sea monster" kind.  It is revealed that every corner of Portorosso, the fishing village that Luca and Alberto visit, is adorned with either statues and images of dead ocean life or just straight up weapons of marine mayhem like sinister-looking harpoons.  Why not just nets?  I of course understand that there needs to be some tension to drive the plot of this movie, but why do characters in a children's movie need to be threatened with serious physical harm and possible death when the threat could simply be discovery or capture?

• Sub-beef:  "Luca" asserts itself as an allegory simultaneously about the power and importance of bravely venturing out into the world in pursuit of your dreams and accepting people who are different from you.  What message does Portorosso's pervasive threat of existential annihilation send the "different" people addressed by this film's central metaphor?  Do those people need to be reminded of the risks to their safety an oppressive society comprises and the limits those risks place on their ability to achieve their dreams?  Ultimately this is a way in which these kinds of movie persist in centering members of dominant culture--by pleading with them to be compassionate toward people who are "different" from them using narratives that are terrorizing to precisely those "different" people.  Couldn't we figure out a way to invert that tired paradigm already?
• Wait a minute, Alberto’s dad just LEFT him??  That plot point is completely heartbreaking, very disturbing for kids, barely explained, and never revisited.  What??

It just would be cool to make children's movies that are inventive, inspiring, and delightful without relying so much on these kinds of emotional tropes and plot clichés.  Children are capable of more emotional nuance and are in many cases more sensitive than these storytelling choices seem to honor.

Minor aside: Why does Disney hate Bruno so much?  What did Bruno ever do to people at Disney?

Less minor aside: Is Disney ever going to be capable of portraying a positive, accepting, and understanding parent-child relationship?  Their heavy reliance on parents being rigid, domineering, and clueless is so exhaustingly formulaic.

The overall strength of "Luca" is weakened by several perplexingly missed narrative opportunities.  Why don't we get to see the deep where Luca's parents threaten to banish him to?  Seriously, where is Alberto’s dad and what the hell is wrong with him that he abandoned his son?  For that matter, what's the deal with Giulia’s mom?  These oversights all end up making the story feel unfinished or underdeveloped, or perhaps like the filmmakers are just trying to set this film up for sequels.

From the first moments of "Luca", it was very striking to me how much this movie is basically just a somewhat adjusted version of "The Little Mermaid" (1989); both films hinge on the main character's acquisition of human stuff facilitating their growing interest in walking among humankind, which requires them to mask their true identity at their peril.  

But instead of fully moving past the main character's interest in material possessions and transitioning to an (admittedly problematic because AGAIN this is media for children) emphasis on achieving romantic love as we saw in "The Little Mermaid", "Luca" remains puzzlingly materialistic, and does so in a way that puts the film at war with itself.  By its conclusion (spoilers ahoy), Luca gets to go to school with Giulia and Alberto gets to remain in Portorosso with Massimo, his replacement father figure.  But the key driver for the film's plot is Luca and Alberto's aspiration to buy a Vespa, ostensibly so they could explore the world together.  This is revisited as the film ends when the boys finally acquire a scooter but then immediately sacrifice it so Luca can pay to go to school...?  Why couldn't they have just stayed together and followed through with their plan?  Again, this movie seems confused with itself.  (Also, is wanting a Vespa in this case a MacGuffin?  I've yet to fully grasp what that is.)

All this leads me to wonder: What happened to Pixar?  As I wrote in one of my earliest posts about "Toy Story 3" (2010), I previously took for granted that their movies were uniquely thoughtful and good!  While they've taken on some cool themes (like girls going through puberty) recently and I thought "Coco" (2017) was wonderful, it seems like their brand isn't as consistently high quality as it used to be.

All that said and all my critiques thusly catalogued, I still found "Luca" to be at least moderately watchable.  I therefore gave it a 3.

I also acknowledge that I have thoroughly and completely failed at writing a brief post here, which speaks to how deeply I love writing about films.  This struggle continues.  But at least I was able to get this post written today!

{Heart}