You can't have too many musical montages in Luca, the spectacular new film from Disney-Pixar that doubles up as a cruel reminder that there will be no Italian vacations for you in the immediate future. Not unless you mask up and get that vaccine.
Set in a sleepy seaside town in the Italian riviera and directed by a man whose almost comically authentic-sounding name (Enrico Casarosa) overcompensates for his lack of feature directing experience, Luca doesn't have the emotional wallop of some of the studio's earlier work, but is still miles ahead of most toxic entertainment geared towards kids these days.
Inspired equally by the films of Federico Fellini and Hayao Miyazaki, Luca is a lot like its protagonist — a hybrid.
On the surface, it's the sort of wholesome American entertainment that audiences have grown to expect from Pixar, but the undercurrent of sadness that runs through most of the studio's films has been replaced by a fountain of optimism. It's no wonder that Luca is in many ways about the fleeting nature of youth, and the importance of nostalgia. It's also a less-strange version of The Shape of Water, but let's not gets into that.
Jacob Tremblay and his Canadian accent star as the titular Luca, a young sea monster that discovers that he can transform into a human being if he ventures above the surface. But the town of Portorosso is a dangerous place, whose inhabitants have long harboured a deep-rooted fear of the sea-dwellers, although they haven't ever really seen any. It's this sight-unseen prejudice against the 'other' that makes Luca a film of great relevance. —Flip board
