Luca

Pixar’s track record puts each new movie at an 0-2 count before the title card. They have such a wide library of fantastic movies that, when they have a bad one, it’s memorable because it’s so infrequent. Luca is frustrating in that regard, because it does the one thing Pixar rarely ever does; it’s aggressively mediocre. Credit where it’s due, it isn’t a “lost person trying to get home” story, a trope they seem to finally have moved away from. This is, in fact, the inverse; someone looking to run away from a life they don’t like. Unfortunately, to build that life, Luca has to borrow heavily from The Little Mermaid and Coco, to the point that Disney could sue itself for plagiarism. There is nary an original plot point to be found. The art style is a weird mishmash of gorgeous scenery and landscapes, and overly cartoonish, Illumination-style creatures and humans. The human models look less realistic than the first Toy Story. It’s awkward and distracting. The movie is further hamstrung by a messaging and tone that is shallow at best. This movie wants to be profound and deeply emotional, but has the complexity and depth of a greeting card. It has a fortune cookie morality that feels oddly tuned down to aim at kids, but an aspiration to aim at adults. In the end, it’s too muddled to hit either. I wish I could go into more detail, but this is such an astonishing platter of meh, I don’t know what more I could say. It doesn’t do anything wrong, because it doesn’t do anything. Even the worst Pixar movies are at least memorable for being bad. Luca commits perhaps the worst crime a Pixar movie can: it is so so average, it’s forgettable.