There’s a cotton candy lightness to Pixar’s ebullient summer confection Luca: a sunny, nimble little story that also threatens to blow away in the sea breeze, as charming as it is minor. It’s a story of friendship and acceptance and one that many excitedly speculated might be about something more groundbreaking but, finally unveiled, it’s mostly more of the same. Another reliably slick combination of the Pixar playbook elements we’ve come to know so well, it’s a gentle, calming whisper that grows faint once it’s over.
Like many of their originals, it’s structured around an inventive, how-did-they-think-of-that conceit: sea monsters do in fact exist but when they make it to land, they briefly become human. Rather like the mogwai from Gremlins, they need to stay dry or their true form will emerge, something that would put them in extreme danger in the Italian town of Portorosso, where sea monsters are both feared and hated. For Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), the world above the sea has been explained to him as an impossibility, his mother stressing the evils it contains; much safer to stay underwater, herding fish and spending time with family. But safer equals duller and when he encounters braver new friend Alberto (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer), he follows him up to the surface and into the town …
When the first trailer hit, it was assumed that, like its leads, Luca might also be hiding its true self, that it could actually be Disney’s first real queer animation, a major milestone for representation within a genre that’s only ever shown us extreme straightness (something that adds to the toxic belief that being gay is somehow R-rated and unsuitable for a broad family audience). The signs were there – an intense male connection, code-switching, a duality of worlds, struggling to be accepted for one’s true self, a Pride month release, the title which some saw as a nod to the director of the gay Italian summer romance Call Me by Your Name, fantastic hair. But director Enrico Casarosa recently shot down such rumours, calling it a film about friendship with sexuality not part of the equation. It’s hard not to watch the film without seeing something allegorical, though, its tale of misfits, straddling two worlds, figuring out who they are and how everyone sees them bearing a close similarity to many coming out narratives. There are of course many ways to view the film’s theme of otherness, whether it be through the lens of immigration or even race, the film fitting alongside other Pixar films that have tried to broach weightier topics with a light touch.
But it’s one of their lesser, frothier attempts in this regard, a sweet but rushed caper that commits a rather familiar Pixar sin: placing an interesting idea in the middle of a rather generic story. The canny sea monster out of water set-up, and the intriguingly knotty dynamic it provides us with, teases much to be explored but the pair are lumbered with a rote tournament narrative instead as they must train and compete in a triathlon so they can win money to buy a Vespa (cue many a montage).
The world of Luca and its thematic potential are just so much more compelling than what ultimately ties it all together, a similar problem hampered parts of Up and Inside Out and more notably and consistently, Brave, thrilling, eccentric ideas that haven’t quite found plots that match them. So the film works in charming bursts, as writers Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones explore the shifting nature of early friendship, of how extreme and all-consuming it can be but also fragile when taken out of its protected bubble and into the world.
It’s string-pulling Pixar formula but done with just about enough effectiveness to work (do their films ever truly fail?). It doesn’t have that emotional kicker of an ending we might expect and hope for, it’s far too slight to evoke an ugly cry, but it’s breezily watchable, low stakes stuff, handsomely animated (on dry land, in water less so) and, like Disney’s spring adventure Raya and the Last Dragon, refreshingly free of romantic diversion, prioritising friendship and self-discovery over getting the boy, girl or sea monster. Wisely shifted from a theatrical release and on to Disney+ (it will be released in cinemas in some territories where the platform isn’t available), it’ll make for a soothing home watch this summer, like a pleasant, balmy trip to the beach you’ll enjoy at the time but struggle to remember by the time the cold returns. While its queerness isn’t specifically mentioned, thematically it’ll still provide an encouraging message about accepting who you really are, a familiar Pixar lesson perhaps but one that always bears repeating to LGBTQ youths, and hopefully one that will arrive with force in the future without needing to hide what it really is.
Luca is available on Disney+ from 18 June and is in UK cinemas from 5 April.