The other children’s movie rewatch I got in recently was Luca, Pixar’s 2021 picture. Luca is a sea monster who assumes human form when on dry land. Warned by his family to stay away from the human village, he nevertheless becomes friends with Alberto, a fellow sea monster who lives on the land full time, and who introduces him to all the wondrous things the world above the water’s surface has to offer. But some of the locals are terrified of sea monsters, and Luca and Alberto are always in danger of being unmasked…
It’s tremendous, the ideal summer movie: the setting and the colours alone make it feel like a 90 minute vacation. And it reads to me unmistakably as a sweet movie about coming out as LGBTQ.
Taking a more granular view, however, while the first 30 minutes especially are utterly perfect (not a word I use lightly), the film takes a tiny stumble at the point when it introduces its antagonist, Ercole, a boorish local cycling champion.
In common with many of the House of Mouse’s recent films, the true antagonist of the film is fear itself. (See Frozen, Moana, Zootopia, Soul, Big Hero 6, the list goes on). But Luca I think spends too much time and energy on this secondary antagonist who is buffoonish and unsubtle and just not interesting enough. For this segment of the film to transcend, it would only need Ercole to reinforce that main theme by proving himself to be motivated by fear, too. Fear of losing the cycling race, fear of growing up, perhaps even fear of coming out. And all the ingredients are there, but somehow the film can’t quite capitalise on them. Instead it leaves him as merely ‘bad’, or perhaps ‘intolerant’. A missed opportunity and a little lesson on the value of integrating your themes…