3.5 stars. Rated PG, for fantasy peril
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.6.20
Despite the traditional Pixar gloss — their films always look spectacular — Onward
is oddly dissatisfying.
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| Even though the clock is ticking, Barley, left, and Ian enjoy an unexpected moment of levity with their partly resurrected father. |
Director Dan Scanlon moves things along at an engaging pace, with a savvy blend of drama and humor; the voice talent brings agreeable emotional weight to a plot that focuses on the importance of family bonds.
But the story itself — by Scanlon, Jason Headley and Keith Bunin — is something of a mess. More critically, it’s not the slightest bit innovative.
The best Pixar films — Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E and Inside Out leap to mind — are built from audaciously clever concepts and unique twists: deviously fresh ways of employing unusual characters to impart gentle lessons about the human condition. Onward, alas, merely mimics existing pop culture, rather than forging its own path.
The elements are not only overly familiar; they’re also assembled clumsily. Nothing new here … and, coming from Pixar, that’s disappointing.
Elf Ian Lightfoot (voiced wistfully by Tom "Spider-Man" Holland) lives in an outlying suburban neighborhood of New Mushroomton: populated by sprites, centaurs, gnomes, satyrs, trolls, pixies, unicorns and all manner of creatures from mythology, folklore, fables and fantasy fiction. But the environment is decidedly modern: At some point in the not-so-distant past, a bright spark realized that switching on a newly invented light bulb was much easier than casting a complicated fire spell.
As a result, magic has all but vanished from the land, which — aside from its unusual inhabitants — now resembles a typical human metropolis replete with high schools, freeway traffic jams and callous developers determined to replace historic magical landmarks with multi-story sprawl.
(A “modern” world that has all but eradicated conjuring. How many dozens — hundreds? — of fantasy books and series have been built of this premise? Been there, done that.)
Ian, turning 16 on this fateful day, has spent his life lamenting the absence of a father who died before he was born. His only echoes are early family photographs and a cassette tape with a few snatches of his father’s voice.
The shy and timid Ian is nothing like his brother, Barley (Chris Pratt): a big, burly and boisterous 19-year-old who lives and breathes the “old magical ways,” and spends most waking hours with his role-playing game Quests of Yore (an obvious blend of Dungeons & Dragons and the card game Magic).
Wanting to brighten Ian’s typically morose day, their mother Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) reveals a gift prepared long ago by their late father, to be presented when both sons had turned at least 16. The boys unwrap a magical, gem-laden staff, nestled alongside a custom-designed spell:
Only once is all we get.
Grant me this rebirth till tomorrow’s sun is set.
One day to walk the earth.
Excited beyond words — a resurrection spell! — Barley eagerly wields the staff, but gets nowhere. It turns out that mild and meek Ian is the brother with “a little magic left in him,” and the staff responds to his touch. But only partly.
When the whirlwind fades, their father has been revived only from the waist down: a pair of pants, his signature striped purple socks and brown shoes. Ergo, this apparition cannot see, hear or speak, and can make “contact” solely (ahem) by bumping a shoe against stuff.
Cue all manner of slapstick sight gags, as these ambulatory legs get into peril, trouble or simply embarrassing encounters. OK, yes; this is amusing — and, on occasion, unexpectedly poignant — but the concept also is more than a little weird, unsettling and off-putting.
Alas, the staff’s gem was destroyed by this halfway-successful conjuring. No matter; the impetuously excited Barley, well-versed in all manner of historic magic lore, knows that a replacement “Phoenix gem” can be found, which will allow the spell to be completed. And this is what Barley has desired his entire life: an actual quest!
Unfortunately, the boys have only “one day” — 24 hours — to succeed.
Hindrance and assistance subsequently involves a variety of supporting characters. The most flamboyant is Corey (Octavia Spencer), a thousand-year-old, once ferocious Manticore — part lion, part bat, part scorpion — now reduced to proprietor of a family-friendly tavern with the (gag me) atmosphere of Chuck E. Cheese. Just as Ian needs to find his inner courage, Corey must reclaim her inner warrior.
Centaur cop Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez) is sweet on Laurel, but thoroughly fed up with Barley’s insubordinate antics. Dewdrop (Grey Griffin) is the fearsome leader of the Pixie Dusters: tiny sprites who, having forgotten how to use their wings, band together to power their motorcycles. Tracey Ullman has a brief but memorable cameo as a greedy pawn shop owner.
Blazey, the Lightfoots’ pet dragon, is a far better — and much more canine authentic — “dog” than the ill-advised CGI star of the recently released Call of the Wild.
The story’s surface quest elements, with all manner of obstacles and danger, never obscure the far more significant “journey of self” experienced by both boys. The blustery Barley, long dismissed and derided for his “old-fashioned” pursuits, has begun to believe that he’ll always live down to everybody’s lowest expectations. Ian, in turn, is resigned to never making friends, or learning to drive, or any of the other milestones expected of a boy approaching adulthood.
Farley and Holland voice these two superbly, playing off each other with the easy, sometimes petulant — and even spiteful — familiarity of brothers who can’t help being competitive. Their dynamic holds this film together, and they get ample support from Louis-Dreyfus’ plucky and resourceful Laurel.
And I must confess to being amused by the way Scanlon and his co-writers have tweaked the long-standing Disney cliché of young characters enduring in the shadow of a deceased parent — which goes all the way back to Bambi — by granting Ian and Barley half of their long-departed father.
But the whole remains less than the sum of its parts. Onward — terrible title, just in passing — doesn’t inspire. It’s too derivative, with elements borrowed from The Hobbit, Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest universe, and various role-playing games.
The magic simply isn’t here.
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