Went to see the new Pixar flick Onward. This one didn’t do the best at the movies this weekend, possibly due to bad marketing and possibly due to people not being interested enough compared to staying home and avoiding crowds.
So Onward’s backstory is that of a pretty intentionally generic fairy tale land with wizards, dragons, and other such creatures. Magic is useful but hard to learn… and then someone invents the light bulb… and everyone can flip a switch, no mystical training required. Soon the generic fantasy land has dropped magic, built cities, airplanes, freeways, and all sorts of things. The movie starts with a pair of elf brothers who lost their dad when they were young. They receive his last gift when the youngest turns 16… a magic staff that will bring Dad back to life for one day. Things go wrong and only Dad’s bottom half comes back so our intrepid heroes set off on a classic quest to get the top half of their dad back.
This is 50% a pretty average to mediocre movie, 25% a very boring, unimaginative movie, and 25% a pretty great ending. It’s a very frustrating movie since there’s so much wrong with it, but it turns everything around in the final act. That final act has a great action sequence that brings forward all the things experienced in the first mediocre two acts. Plus it’s (Pixar required) emotional core is laid out and it’s great too… completely didn’t see where they were going with it and it worked. There’s real emotional intelligence to this film. I wish I could say I loved it…
A lot of what didn’t work is the movie’s startling lack of imagination. For a modern world based around fantasy tropes, they barely do an ounce of decent world building. Think of Zootopia and the amount of thought that went into creating a world of vastly different scales and animal shapes. in Onward, they have a centaur cop who drives around in a regular squad car like we have in our boring human world. Why wouldn’t they have built cars to fit a horse/human hybrid… or motorcycles for a gang of six inch tall fairies? There’s all sorts of things that just completely lack the imagination of the setting they created for themselves.
That said, they do have a soft drink called Mountain Doom (Mtn. Doom). I approve of that joke at lest.
The overall quest the heroes are on also lacks drive, charm, and stakes. We get they have 24 hours to get the top half of dad back… but that means the movie relies on a pair of legs (and crotch) as something we’re invested in. I was not so I found a lot of the adventures kind of bland. But I can’t argue that the script was ultimately great for taking a lot of the stuff in those first acts and applying them masterfully to the final act. But they could have done it all just… better.
So, yeah, this movie is a mess. I find it hard to recommend except for the little fact the ending is legitimately pretty great. Everything they did half-handedly turns out to help both the emotional and action finale. I’d say it’s worth seeing if you have more patience than me or give them more of a pass on their lack of creativity and world-building.
Score: 76