LUCA. Starting: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Maya Rudolph, and Emma Berman. Also, Marco Barricelli, Saverio Raimondo, and Jim Gaffigan. Directed by Enrico Casarosa. Rated PG (Mild themes). 95 min.
This is the first feature length film for director, Enrico Casarosa, who has built the film’s story-line around his own childhood in Genoa, Italy, where he also had a best friend, called Alberto. The film is set on the Italian Riviera where Casarosa grew up. The sea monsters featured in the film are taken from Italian myths and folklore.
In the film, Luca Paguro (voiced by Tremblay) is a 12-year-old sea monster who lives in the waters off the Italian coast-line. He is told that the world above him is a dangerous place, but he longs for what he thinks it can offer him. His mother, Daniela (Rudolph) is determined to keep her son safe, and warns him constantly, and determinedly, about the dangers of life above the ocean waves. Out of the sea and on land, Luca frolics with a new-found companion who is also from the ocean below, and who becomes his best friend – Alberto (Grazer), who is just as eager as Luca to explore the world around him, and to discover what he calls “the human stuff”. Alberto wants to learn what the human world has in store for him, and Luca and Alberto adventure in human form out of the waters of Portorosso, a seaside town in the Italian Riviera. They try (without success) to keep their identity as sea monsters a secret.
The core theme of the film is the close friendship of two boys, growing up with life’s possibilities around them. It is a time of life for Luca and Alberto, when their identities are being formed to take them from boyhood though to adolescence, via the formation of human attachment.
In their adventures, Luca and Alberto meet Giulia (Berman), an Italian girl, who befriends them. She is an outgoing adventurer, and enlists their aid to win “The Portorosso (Sporting) Cup”, but she is sceptical about the existence of sea monsters, which, of course, Luca and Alberto are. Giulia is startled by the revelation of their true identity, but friendship survives her insight, and all three stay reconciled and emotionally attached to each other.
Pixar has been responsible for some creative films, such as Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), Inside Out (2015, and most recently Soul which won an Oscar for best animated feature film in the 2020 Academy Awards. Soul was a conceptually weighty film that provided a captivating journey into the realms of imagination about the meaning of life. Luca expresses the power of finding and embracing freedom, but it operates at a more personal, adventurous level. Characteristic of Pixar’s work, it is witty, full of colour and offers contrasting set-design imagery with excellent shading effects, all with a colourful Italian look and feel. Instead of tackling demanding concepts such as “play” (Toy Story) or “emotion” (Inside Out), the movie examines the meaning of friendship in a simpler, more concrete way. In the film, Pixar offers inventive computer animation that fills the movie with ideas about how to sensibly grow up, and uses fantasy action to project its core concerns.
Childhood friendships and attachments help to provide the background for sound identity formation, and this is a movie that happily celebrates friendship and human attachment. The adventuring of Luca and Alberto provides a variety of escapades that communicate the film’s messages about the value of friendship in a way that gives meaning and purpose to how one sensibly grows up. The film lacks the philosophical, provocative challenges of Soul, but it pursues its themes in a venturesome way, that should have strong appeal to the young at heart.
Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures
Released: Streaming on Disney +, 18 June 2021
Peter W. Sheehan is an Associate of Jesuit Media