One of the great things about
Pixar is that they have very simple but highly creative premises. The concepts
for their movies can often be summarized with just one sentence that hooks you
right away. Toy Story? Toys come to life when no one’s looking. Monsters
Inc.? Monsters scare kids because children’s screams are an energy source. Ratatouille?
A rat wants to become a chef. Cars? We need to sell merch so we can have
the money to make good movies. Onward, similarly, has a very out-there
but still easy to grasp premise: What if our mundane modern world was inhabited
by magical creatures? At first, that may sound a little too similar to the
infamous Bright, but where that was a mangled racism metaphor, this
takes on Pixar’s well-worn themes of overcoming insecurities, the value of
atypical families and following your gut vs following the rules by making the
metaphorical literal.
Our story is set in a
fairy-tale-like kingdom where magic once filled the world with wonder and those
who wielded it were some of the most revered creatures in the land. But as time
passed, technology slowly began to supersede magic, and its use became less and
less prominent. Our two protagonists are a scrawny, insecure elf named Ian (Tom
Holland), and his boisterous slacker older brother Barley (Chris Pratt). On
Ian’s sixteenth birthday, their mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gives them a gift left
by their deceased father; a wizard staff, a phoenix gem, and instructions for a
spell that will bring him back to life for one day. Halfway through, the spell
malfunctions and the gem shatters, resulting in the father only being materialized
from the waist down. With only 24 hours before it wears off, Ian and Barley
venture on a quest to find another gem so they can complete the spell and fully
restore him.
One thing Pixar has always
excelled at is squeezing every ounce of potential out of their concepts. In the
case of Onward, the suburban coming-of-age story by way of a Dungeons
& Dragons campaign gets much more mileage than Bright ever could’ve
dreamed of. Part of this is because of their knack for seeding the plot with
little details that end up paying off 70 minutes later, and mixing the magical
with the mundane, and how they find the parallels between the pit stops of a
road trip and an adventurous quest. Prime examples of this is include a once
rough and tumble tavern where adventurers gathered to find quests getting
turned into a TGI Friday’s style family restaurant, with the manager being a
flustered manticore (Octavia Spencer) who was once a fearsome warrior that lost
her edge, or the boys’ policeman stepfather (Mel Rodriguez) insisting on
driving everywhere even though he’s a centaur. I feel like there’s a lot more
they could’ve done with their worldbuilding, especially in coming with creative
ways of how these various creatures coexist ala Zootopia, but the
setting is mostly just a typical modern American suburb but with elves and
orcs. Heck, having the dad be just a pair of legs lends itself to a ton of
comedic and emotional potential, but half the time you forget he’s even there.
I’m sure this was all deliberate, but if that’s the case, they did their job a
little too well.
If there’s one through-line
that runs through Onward, is the sense of something missing that will
somehow set things right if brought back. The world this movie inhabits was once
run by magic, and once it went away, all the wonder was taken with it. Barley
is obsessed with a D&D style role playing game that’s based on historical
events which he uses as a way of directing their quest, much to Ian’s
skepticism. Likewise, Dad’s absence weighs heavily on the family, with Barley
only having a few scant memories of him and Ian having none at all. In fact, it’s
Ian’s lack of confidence that leads him to botch the spell and set the plot in
motion.
While the movie takes a while
to get things going, it gets much better once it finds its feet. While the
mechanics of this world are secondary, the focus of Pixar movies has always
been the emotional core, in this case that being the dynamic between Ian and
Barley. The scrawny insecure one and the bombastic big guy is surely something
we’ve seen before, but making them brothers adds a whole new flavor to it. Ian is
the only one capable of using magic and has to learn spells for them to succeed
on their quest, but his insecurities keep getting in the way. Barley has a deep
knowledge of magic despite not being magically attuned himself, but does his
best to mentor his brother, is wholly supportive and never gets jealous. And
although the dad is a bit underutilized, the moments they do wring out of him
are amazingly effective. And it’s all worth it once they get to the ending.
Falling into Disney’s current knack for twists, this one implements are perceptive
twist that recontextualizes the kind of movie we thought they were watching,
culminating into a big climax when one of the brothers accidentally summons a
dragon, and an emotional gut punch of a final ten minutes that gives Coco
a run for its money.
Bottom line, Onward is
not one of Pixar’s finest, but that’s not a mark against them. It may have a
more difficult time finding its audience, with its premise seeming too gimmicky
to some and too mature for kids to others, but once you get past that hurdle,
and the slow start at the beginning, you’ll be rewarded with a tightly written
and emotionally effective movie. I mean, half of the spring lineup has been
cancelled due to the coronavirus anyway, so what else are you gonna see?
7/10
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