Silenzio Bruno! Luca is another winner from Pixar but doesn’t reach the heights of their very best work. While it has a very wholesome feeling, it didn’t elicit the emotions that we’ve come to expect from the studio.
A coming-of-age story set in a beautiful seaside town on the Italian Riviera, the film centers on a young boy experiencing an unforgettable summer filled with gelato, pasta, and endless Vespa rides. Luca shares these adventures with his newfound best friend Alberto, but a deeply-held secret threatens all the fun: he is a sea monster from another world just below the water’s surface.
While it’s not up to the high standards that Pixar films are now held, this was still very enjoyable. There is so much to love about this film. It’s beautiful looking, with bright colors and extraordinary animation. Due to the Italian setting and taking place during the summer, all I could think of was Call Me by Your Name including the fact that both these films were directed by Italian men.
While that film is romantic, this is a bromance and a great one at that. I loved the friendship between Alberto and Luca. This is just something for me, but being a huge Studio Ghibli fan, I loved that the town was named after the studio’s Porco Rosso, one of their best films.
I loved the humor in Luca. Easily one of the funniest Pixar films for me. I laughed a lot, thanks to the performances. While they aren’t Italian, Jacob Tremblay and Jack Dylan Grazer do a fantastic job of bringing much to their characters and friendship. Their friendship gave me a very nostalgic feeling of building a great friendship in your youth. When they meet Giulia, voiced beautifully by Emma Berman, their friendship gets even more interesting, and she does a great job at bringing in some conflict for the close duo.
The always reliable Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan are great as Luca’s parents. They show they are comedy pros with the humor they bring into the film. No spoilers, but how they are used in the third act was funny.
While I had a great time, Luca also has its flaws. The storyline isn’t that original – it’s Splash meets The Little Mermaid or any other “fish out the water” storyline you can think of. It was very predictable with no surprises. It was easy to spot pretty much everything, which is rare for a Pixar film, as they tend to surprise me a lot at times with where their stories go. A minor nitpick, but I feel like Enrico Casarosa’s direction threw every Italian stereotype at us. He kept showing us how Italian kids like soccer, pasta, and gelato. The last issue I had with the film was that I wasn’t too big on Enrico’s villain. While he did make me laugh a handful of times, he just felt too basic for a Pixar villain and not complex like most of their classic villains are.
Overall, Luca continues Pixar’s current trend of going out of their comfort zone in tackling other cultures they haven’t before as they did with Coco and Soul. Despite the stereotypes, I feel they did a great job at showing kids something that isn’t America with a universal story that anyone can relate to. While this isn’t top-tier Pixar, this is still a fun, loving film about acceptance that is a must-watch.
