Directed by Enrico Casarosa
Written by Jesse Andrews, Mike Jones
Starring Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Maya Rudolph
Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes
Rated PG for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence

Streaming on Disney+ starting June 18

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring

While Luca is Pixar’s 24th animated feature, it might be the first one that is properly called a cartoon. While their prowess at storytelling helped them stand out from other animation studios, the visual style of their films has tended to emphasize reality. Earlier Pixar projects would tout the number of individual hairs on a character’s body, or the program built to try and simulate water. There’s nothing lacking in that approach, but perhaps my favorite thing about Luca is this change of pace. The style used here feels less refined, less perfect, and therefore warmer than a lot of the studio’s recent output. The goal here isn’t one of realism but of emotion, which is reflected in the picturesque setting and the dreamlike cutaways provided by the protagonist. 

Director Enrico Casarosa has openly cited the works of Miyazaki Hayao as an inspiration for Luca. The name of the town is even Portorosso, an homage to the Japanese director’s 1992 film Porco Rosso. The bicycles and scooters that often appear in Miyazaki’s works also play a key role in this story. But aside from the vibrant color palette, the closest comparison to Luca might be the work of Cartoon Saloon. The Kilkenny, Ireland based studio’s cartoons often marry folklore to lessons for young people, with last year’s Wolfwalkers being the most recent example. These smaller-scale stories demonstrate the imagination and possibilities of the medium just as well as any story with world-ending stakes. 

The highest drama in Luca is that of acceptance. Two boys from the sea, Luca (Jacob Tremblay) and Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) spend time on land bonding, exploring, and dreaming of adventures on the back of a Vespa. Confident that they can pass for humans as long as they stay dry (when water hits their skin, they revert back to their sea monster form) they head into the human town of Portorosso. There they meet Giulia (Emma Berman), a young girl who spends summers in town living with her father, and learn of a triathlon–swimming, cycling, and pasta eating–that would provide the prize money they need to hit the road. Throughout the story, tension and humor is derived from the potential exposure of the boys’ secret. While Giulla feels like an outcast, Luca and Alberto have more than other kids to worry about, as the town has made hunting of the legendary sea monsters part of its cultural identity. 

From the moment the trailer was shown, the aesthetic comparisons to Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name invited speculation that Luca would feature a homosexual relationship between its two leads. The friendship between Luca and Alberto features enough hallmarks of queer romance on screen that the themes would feel evident regardless of the aesthetic. Alberto is independent, takes risks, and gregarious. Luca is more timid and shy, and Alberto often pushes him outside his comfort zone. The boys bond over their loneliness and their curiosity about the surface world. Each individual viewer will need to interpret their own thoughts on this relationship, but there is certainly a decent amount of queer coding in both the characters and the story’s thematic leanings to make that reading one that is based on actual movie details rather than anything to do with Timothée Chalamet. 

While I typically enjoy much of Pixar’s output, it is refreshing to see them be able to put out an earnest yet cerebral exercise in Soul and follow it up just a few months later with a film that doesn’t intellectualize its feelings or existential crises. Luca is about identity and acceptance without abstracting them, but by living in them. Soul may be a more interesting movie to puzzle over and marvel at, but Luca is one that feels made to revisit over and over just to spend time with its charming characters and lush world.