Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers for Luca and references to other cinematographic works.
ACT ONE – THE WORLD OF LUCA
Visually stunning, Luca is everything you’ve come to expect from Pixar. From the beautiful Ligurian Coast, epic dream sequences to the colorful characters. Like every Pixar outing, you’ll be in thrilling awe from start to finish. But it’s when you start questioning the mechanics of this striking world that your mind proceeds to wander and wonder.
Yes, this is a children’s movie. Nevertheless, Pixar always finds a way to include the adults in the audience. And just like with each film, it will be them doing all the questioning. We know this happens in Italy— even if Portorosso is a fictional fishing town. Strangely, we’re never given an actual timeframe in which the film takes place. Alberto, one of the three main characters, has an infatuation with Vespas (the Italian scooter), which came around in 1946, and has a photo of Marcello Mastroianni as Fefe Cefalù in Divorce Italian Style (1961). We see several movie posters in town, including Roman Holiday (1953) starring Katherine Hepburn and Gregory Peck. There’s another interesting poster, but neither the title nor the actors involved could be found in my research. Still, it has the esoteric title of Attacco del Mostro Marino (Sea Monster Attack).
If you’ve seen the trailers or posters for Luca, you already know the sea monsters look like humans when they’re dry.
What the trailer doesn’t tell you is that the sea monsters avoid humans, or as they call them “land monsters.” We’ll talk more about that in the next act. For now, let’s focus on the magic that changes the sea monsters into human-looking versions of themselves. Even a single drop of water (whether natural or processed) brings the scales out of any of the underwater dwellers. Was this ability a camouflage method used by the ancestors when they ventured to land? Do we share a common origin with them? As interesting as it is to theorize, we’re never told.
Now, this ability is common knowledge among the sea people, yet, the movie wants us to believe that (at least) Luca’s family have never even tried to see what each other would look like as humans. That would ensure shenanigans later. But it doesn’t make sense from a security standpoint if you’re really concerned about interacting with awful land monsters. Why or how the sea monsters can do this is probably not that important in the context of the movie, but it’s intriguing and could keep you guessing and wondering if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like loose ends (or plot holes).
Both humans and sea monsters in Luca share Italian names and surnames.
The world-building never shows an India/Pakistan situation where this coast was once a single territory. Could there be a bloody history of separation between the two races? After all, this all happens in Portorosso which literally means Red Port. The sea monsters not only understand human speech but also the written language. Yet, we don’t see Luca go to school. He spends his time tending fish that act and bleat like sheep, so we don’t know if this is a plot hole, he’s homeschooled, or what! Perhaps it’s the movie continuously mirroring both land and sea societies?
And to close the first act, although this one could be solely on me, even if all characters’ designs are beautiful and distinctive, I couldn’t help but having flashbacks to The Peanuts Movie (2015) every time Giulia, the only human of the main characters trio, was around. Something about her design felt like she was from that universe and not Portorosso’s.
ACT TWO – THE STORY
Because there’s really nothing new under the sun, any flashbacks to The Little Mermaid (1989), Tangled (2010), or every ’80s and ’90s movie with an obnoxious, over the top, bratty villain are forgiven. The story in itself isn’t convoluted: the main character gets enchanted by a new world and fights to belong because it seems a better fit for him as opposed to his home. However, side plots and things I mentioned in the previous act try really hard to steal focus, complicating your perception.
We meet Luca living with his (overprotecting) mom, (clichéd oblivious) father, and (mysteriously indulgent) grandmother. Thanks to the “they’re sea people-eating beasts” constantly endorsed and advertised by his mother, Luca is more afraid than intrigued by the land monsters’ existence.
That is until land-dwelling sea monster Alberto appears.
Alberto is a delightful combination of Ariel and Scuttle the seagull from The Little Mermaid (1989); he loves collecting human stuff and boasts knowledge of their uses even if he’s wrong 90% of the time. Luca strikes up a fast friendship with Alberto while spending more and more time on his deserted island. Well, until he’s discovered by his parents, who threaten to send him to live with Uncle Ugo (marvelously voiced by Sasha Baron Cohen) at the bottom of the sea if he doesn’t stop going to the surface.
This dark, bottom-dwelling future is what pushes Vespa-obsessed Alberto to convince Luca that escaping to the nearest human settlement to find the mythical Signore Vespa and ask for one of his creations is the best chance they have to achieve their dream of traveling the world together in freedom.
In many ways, Alberto’s cockiness is a disguise for his abandonment issues (one of those pesky spotlight-stealing side plots). This shines bright as soon as they enter Portorosso. Simultaneously, they encounter a nemesis in town bully Ercole, and a champion in Giulia. It just so happens, Giulia has her own solitary war against Ercole’s “Evil Empire of Injustice.”
Those are Giulia’s words, not mine.
Giulia and Ercole’s main battlefield is the Portorosso Cup; a race divided into three parts: swimming, pasta eating, and mountain biking. Seeing there’s prize money involved, Luca convinces Alberto to join Giulia and use their share to buy a (rusty, probably thirdhand) Vespa. They tell Giulia they are runaways, and she offers to let them stay with her. To sell her father on their guests, Giulia presents Alberto and Luca as classmates from where she lives with her mother during the school year. They win the imposingly mustachioed dad over the next day by guiding him to an epic fishing spot.
Luca’s parents finally decide to risk land in search of their son; thus, their own shenanigans ensue as they do not know what he looks like in human form. Meanwhile, Luca and Alberto try to train with Giulia without being discovered as liars, dodge Ercole’s bullying, and avoid getting wet. Not to mention learning how to deal with a town hell-bent on destroying the sea monsters.
There’s a rift among the trio before the PCup. It ends with Alberto retreating to the sea and Giulia and Luca doing the triathlon separately.
I wonder if I should keep throwing spoilers or leave something to surprise you in case you decide to watch?
ACT THREE – THE AFTERMATH
When doing a movie (or any other work really) embedded in a specific cultural setting from a different perspective, the path you walk, particularly in these woke times, is pretty narrow. Luca happens in Italy, but we are receiving it in English from an American studio.
Its director, Enrico Casarosa, is a Genoa native so he knows the place; most of it is based on his own childhood memories actually. Still, he has to make a product suitable for a mostly not Italian audience. The English of the movie is inundated with Italian words. I’ve seen this done in other movies, mostly with Spanish, to variable degrees of success. Due to proximity, Spanish is probably more palatable to American viewers than other languages, but who knows.
The prime example could be Pixar’s own Coco (2017), and yet I feel that in Luca the use of words from the source culture was extreme.
Now, you look at my last name and could say, “Well, he didn’t see it in Coco because his mother language is probably Spanish.” Yes, my mother language is Spanish and my sister happens to be married to an Italian man… But I don’t think it was that with Luca because funnily enough, the first time I watched it was in Spanish, and we had there the same flood of Italian words clashing with another Romance Language and being very distracting to my ears. There are Italian words with a passable English sound like in the famous phrase “Silenzio, Bruno.”. Yet, those weren’t the norm.
Luca has more world-building potholes than actual plot holes, but that could be equally, or perhaps more, distracting. Pixar knows how to hit the adults in the feels. Unfortunately, what could’ve been a sweet reminiscence of summer beach vacations was waylaid by narrative incongruencies. Along with Giulia saying, “Santo/Santa (insert Italian cheese name here)” as if it were “Oh, my God” in every other scene.
I cannot say I did not enjoy the movie because I did. Nevertheless, I’m certain with a little more background and a different approach to several situations it would’ve been an even better experience.
I’m giving it 7/10.
Luca is available for streaming now at Dinsey+