This animation
is charming, funny, and the adventure is very inviting. In fact, the adventure
in this movie about using magic to get something you want, and being on a quest
to find a special gem to make it happen, is something I bet RPG game lovers
have wished for themselves. Not to mention battling a dragon, having allies
with magical swords, and solving puzzles—this movie is an RPG board game
brought to life.
There’s this
Disney/Pixar formula of one parent being dead in many of their movies. They
seem to use it a lot. When I saw it happening again, I wondered why they can't
come up with another narrative to center their lead's story on. That said, this
movie uses the same formula of a dead parent and makes that the main arc on
which the story spins. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ll understand that this
animation is about two brothers trying to bring their dead father back to life.
The idea stems from a gift their father left them, which was given to them by
their strong-willed mother (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
The movie’s plot
comes from Dan Scanlon’s own personal life. (He also directed Disney/Pixar's Monsters
University in 2013.) When he was a year old, he and his older brother lost
their father. It is from this sad beginning in Scanlon's life that this story
builds on. The story takes place in another world, where we have two elven,
blue-haired brothers living with their strong-willed widowed mother. Their
father died before the youngest, Ian (Tom Holland), was born.
Ian is shy,
skinny, and odd. The movie introduces us to him when he turns sixteen. He hopes
it will be a turning point in his life, where he will change from being this
shy person to a more confident one. His big brother is Barley (Chris Pratt),
who is somewhat aloof about what's going on in the real world. He is out of
school and still lives at home with their mother. He’s a fanatic of a Dungeons
& Dragons-style role-playing game and seems to have mastered everything in
it.
When their
father’s gift—a magic staff—is given to them by their mom, Barley knows
immediately how it’s supposed to work. It just so happens he doesn't know how
to make it work. The staff comes with a spell that will make them see their
father for just one more day. Ian mistakenly conjures the spell, which makes
Barley happy, but the spell is incomplete, and they’ll need a gem to finish it.
So, they have
half of their dad back—from the waist down—and Barley, who always wanted to go
on an adventure, drags Ian with him on a journey to find the gem that will
complete the spell.
The chemistry
between Tom Holland and Chris Pratt in this movie is amazing, and the movie
develops into a bumbling adventure, the way Pixar knows how to deliver.
The movie is
worth seeing with the family, but don’t expect it to have the same magical
spark as the Pixar classics.
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