Pixar has made some incredible films – WALL-E, Toy Story, Cars, Inside Out and the aptly named The Incredibles . But with a few exceptions ( The Good Dinosaur ; what went wrong there?) the studio’s weakest offerings have been its sequels – Cars 2 and 3 , Finding Dory , and Monsters University , the last directed by Dan Scanlon.
Which brings us to Onward , Scanlon’s newest offering. It’s not bad, but it feels like the sequel to a better movie you haven’t seen. In some alternate universe there exists an Onward Part Zero , which introduces two brothers – Tom Holland as Ian, the younger and more cautious; Chris Pratt as Barley, fearless and also somehow less mature – and sets them out on a crazy adventure. Onward is its uninspired follow-up.
The world they inhabit is a fascinating one. Imagine if middle-Earth were a real place that existed long ago, but then the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution came along, and its inhabitants turned away from magic in favour of smartphones and Smart Cars.
I love the notion that unicorns are the mangy, feral raccoons of New Mushroomton
Welcome to New Mushroomton, home to Golbins, Trolls, Centaurs, Sprites, Dragons, etc. (Though surprisingly little racial disharmony among these groups; clearly they’re doing something right.) Teenagers Ian and Barley are Elves, as is their mom, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Their dad died years ago, leaving Barley with a few hazy memories and Ian with none.
On Ian’s 16th birthday he receives a letter from his dad, who apparently dabbled in the lost magical arts before his death. The missive includes a spell that will bring the old man back from the dead for 24 hours, so he can see how his kids have turned out.
From this point, Onward could easily have skewed into terror territory, but Scanlon’s family-friendly, heartstring-tugging story is more concerned with the relationship between the brothers, and their desire to find some closure by seeing their dad one last time. Cynical Ian half-heartedly mutters the spell, and it half works; dad’s back, but only from the waist down. Half-baked hijinks ensue.
The quest finds the brothers in search of a crystal that can complete the spell before the 24 hours are up. This leads them to Corey the Manticore – part lion, part scorpion, all Octavia Spencer – who provides a clue. But their worried mother also alerts her new boyfriend, a genial cop (and Centaur) named Colt Bronco.
Onward features a weird mix of animation styles. The characters look squishy-cartoony – and in the case of Ian, oddly similar to the main human character from Pixar’s Ratatouille . But the backgrounds, in particular the cityscapes, are almost photo-realistic in their design. It’s slightly disconcerting, but shouldn’t put off the youngsters at whom the story is clearly aimed.
There’s also some nice background humour at play. The forgotten magic of this world lives on in its typography, which is mostly of the sort you might see on a medieval-themed restaurant menu. And I love the notion that unicorns are the mangy, feral raccoons of New Mushroomton.
Finally, there’s that lost-parent theme, which left me a little choked up in the final reel. My own father died more than a decade ago, but I can testify that it’s a wound that never fully heals. Still, it all feels a little unearned; Onward is a decent Pixar product – which already places it atop most other animated movies these days – but we’ve come to expect more from the studio. Like its setting, it’s in need of a little more of the old magic.
Onward opens across Canada on March 6.
3 stars out of 5
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
