What’s It About
Set in a beautiful seaside town on the Italian Riviera, the original animated feature is a coming-of-age story about one young boy experiencing an unforgettable summer filled with gelato, pasta and endless scooter rides. Luca shares these adventures with his newfound best friend, but all the fun is threatened by a deeply-held secret: he is a sea monster from another world just below the water’s surface.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
I think Pixar has lost its creative magic. The studio lasted this long by taking a simple idea and turning it into a somewhat original concept. Their movie Inside Out was a feature-length idea from a 90’s TV show called Herman’s Head. Other films had toys talking when no one’s around, sentient vehicles, a desolate Earth with a trash compactor as a savior, and so on. Like I stated, the same idea with a twist. Luca is about the human myth of sea monsters’ existence and the existence of sea monsters from a young boy’s perspective. In other words, it’s the male version of The Little Mermaid mixed with Ponyo. Take those out of your memory, and Luca is a great film. Since this is a film and not a series, the writers had to breeze past the entire conceptual world of Luca’s underwater home and focus on the relationships between Luca, his newfound sea monster friend Alberto and human friend Guilia. There are so many plot holes and unnecessary gaps. It becomes frustrating at times as to what is truly happening. The main issue never explained is how/why sea monsters turn into humans when out of the water? The whole transformation thing is very inconsistent. Sometimes, all it takes is a simple shake of their head for the water to fall off, and they are human again. Other times one drop of water starts the change. Like I stated, plot holes and frustrations were abundant. As for the story, it’s almost solely about Luca’s discoveries in the human world. The basic coming-of-age tale but with sea monsters instead of humans. By comparison, Luca is much like Ariel, a trusting kid with no real knowledge of the world passed his door. Luca disobeys his parents throughout the movie, skips his daily chores, goes on land, mingles with humans, and learns more about the human world in a few weeks than he has in his entire young life. His “best” friend Alberto was more of a bad influence than any human, and they wanted to kill sea monsters. Overall, this movie is filled with standard kid antics with the added sea monster obstacle. The bad guy is relatively weak, which puts total focus on water, not touching Alberto or Luca while humans are present. Lastly, the moral. Aspects have been shown throughout the film, but the last twenty minutes brings it home. Sadly, Luca is far below what we have come to expect from Pixar, but it is still a decent film.
OUR RATING – A FRESH OUT OF THE WATER 7.5
MEDIA
- Genre – Fantasy
- Street date
- Digital/DVD/Blu-Ray/4K August 3rd, 2021
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 1.25:1
- Sound – English: Dolby Atmos, French: Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital Plus 7.1
- Subtitles – English SDH, French, Italian, Spanish
Extras
- Our Italian Inspiration (HD 14:21)
- Secretly a Sea Monster (HD 12:23)
- Best Friends (HD 7:15)
- Deleted Scenes w/ Director Introduction (HD 30:30)
- Trailers