MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Since time immemorial, tales of sea monsters and their ilk have been told. As with most things that humans could not explain, we have created stories about them, often serving as a warning for those who would take risks to venture into uncharted waters. How then would we feel if, for those same creatures of myth, we were the ones that they feared and were wary of?
In Disney and Pixar’s Luca, that is the scenario facing the young protagonist even as he yearns for something different than his existence underwater. On the outskirts of the town of Portorosso on the Italian Riviera, 13-year-old Luca Paguro (Jacob Tremblay) herds goatfish on the seafloor for his parents, Lorenzo (Jim Gaffigan) and Daniela (Maya Rudolph). All his life, Luca has been told that going up to the surface and interacting with the “land monsters” is dangerous.
When Luca comes into contact with the devil may care Alberto Scorfano (Jack Dylan Grazer) however, Luca is enamored with his new friend’s life. All the sea dwellers lose their scales and fins when they’re on land and resemble regular human beings. Apparently, Alberto’s father left his son to live on his own and with no parental supervision, Alberto frequently goes to the surface to go on adventures. Alberto even has an island hideout and he and Luca work together on a makeshift Vespa, dreaming of traveling to the stars.
Lorenzo and Daniela discover this and threaten to send Luca to the deep sea, forcing Luca to travel with Alberto to Portorosso. Despite Luca’s nervousness, Alberto pumps him up with courage and tells him to yell “Silenzio, Bruno!” as a means of quieting that inner voice that hinders Luca from being brave. On land, the boys encounter Giulia Marcovaldo (Emma Berman), a headstrong girl who dreams of winning the Portorosso Cup Race, a triathlon competition involving swimming, pasta eating, and biking. All three come afoul of local bully Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo), a repeat champion of the race who keeps entering even though he is too old to qualify.
Luca, Alberto, and Giulia agree to join the triathlon and with the help of Giulia’s father Massimo (Marco Barricelli), start practicing and training. Luca learns to ride a bike while Alberto prepares to eat large amounts of pasta and Giulia prepares to swim. All this time, the boys hide their true nature from Giulia and her father because the residents of Portorosso have been hunting sea monsters for years. As Luca and Giulia become closer because of Giulia’s stories of reading books and learning at her school, Alberto begins to resent being left out and it threatens to drive a wedge into their plans.
One can’t help but see some parallels between Luca and that other classic Disney tale of someone under the sea aching to live on land, 1989’s The Little Mermaid. Like Ariel before him, Luca is fascinated with the surface world and wants to explore it without the restrictions of his strict parents. Animation and computer-generated animation in particular have come a long way in the 34 years since Ariel first sang “Part of Your World” and Luca is a great example of that. The colors of the sea monsters and life on the sea floor are stunning in their vibrancy and the transformation effects from sea monster to human and back are amazing.
Rural life on the Italian Riviera is presented as idyllic and simple, without the trappings of big city life, enough to capture the imagination of boys like Luca and Alberto who are yearning for adventure. The dynamic of the friendship between Luca and Alberto is thrown for a loop when Giulia is added and Alberto’s abandonment issues come to the fore when Luca becomes fascinated with the stuff Giulia learned in school. When the story eventually reveals that Alberto left him to live on his own, the bravado that made him appealing to Luca is stripped away, leaving a scared and abandoned boy.
It would have been so easy for the voice actors to all give bad Italian accents to live up to stereotypes built up over the years because this film still has comedic elements. However, the filmmakers instead chose not to do that, only throwing in an Italian word or two every so often and not go down that road. Whoever is in charge of marketing at Vespa also needs to be complimented because Luca definitely feels like a major endorsement for the popular Italian scooter brand. The way it was represented, whether in dream sequences or even a beat-up and clunky one made the brand seem like the stuff of dreams.
Even as the audience is mesmerized by the improvements in animation and the stunning use of colors and effects, what has always permeated successful Disney and Pixar movies is their heart and Luca is no different. A coming-of-age film is hard to do when you consider that classic Disney films often featured princesses and princes who were closer to 20 and romantically falling in love. That wasn’t the case with Luca. There is awkwardness in the main character’s relationships with his parents and with his friends because the adolescent years are all about awkwardness. That doesn’t lessen the film, it in fact, makes Luca truer.
