Onward (2020)

 

Genre: Family/ Adventure                Time: 1h 42mins            Director: Dan Scanlon

Quick Summary: In a magical world full of technological advances, elven brothers Ian and Barley Lightfoot set out on an adventure to resurrect their late father for a day.

This film is really sweet and heartfelt whilst blending comedy perfectly, but unfortunately becomes a bit half-committed.

 It's a wonderful film about overcoming fear and exploring family bonds. A lot of attention to detail has gone into this, where every frame seems to have an easter egg or some sort of reference. I mean the whole film is full of references to Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the gathering. It has tons of references to other various fantasy media and it's so fun to point them out. 

The bond between the main two, Barley (Chriss Pratt) and Ian (Tom Holland), work together really well and bounce off each other wonderfully with two contrasting personalities, extreme extrovert and introvert. You do believe that they have been brothers for years. I also did really enjoy watching their bond develop more throughout the film, and they learn things about each other that I found adorable.

The plot does follow all the basic beats of a Pixar story, but surprisingly it doesn't become predictable. Though, as unique as the ending is, the tonal shift in the later half feels at odds with the lighthearted events that preceded it. The film does not spend enough time establishing the dangers of the old world, so the whole climax aspect feels forced and underdeveloped. It is a bit episodic in structure, leaping from one place to get one thing before leaping to another place to get another, and so on and so on in a series of breathless fetch quests.

The main comedy element of this tags along with the main two who happen to be just a pair of magic legs/ They manage to bring this along by fastening a stuffed torso and a baseball cap onto his pants and trying to act as normal as possible in public, even as they’re yanking him around by a retractable dog leash. The floppy, “Weekend at Bernie’s” style physical comedy is good for a laugh or two but grows old quickly and eventually feels like easy, go-to shtick. 

The main problem I had with this film, is it didn't dare to go outside the box much. It played safe and soft-edged, which kinda disappointed me for a Pixar film. Though the ending was very emotional, it felt very bumpy along the road to getting there. 

I did like the character designs for this, even if they are a bit simple. But the issue I had was that Barley stuck out way more than Ian who is the main character. His design felt like it had way more thought put into it. 

Another thing, which I thought was very unique and I was unsure about was the film entirely lacks anything resembling a villain. The end result is a movie where the stakes feel personal, but unfortunately still fairly low, and the surge of revelatory feeling at the end is sweet, but a little unearned.

Overall, this film is very sweet but felt very rushed in the plot.

6/10