Pixar’s latest, Onward, is set to hit theaters this week and it’s a departure from other Pixar films to date. While Pixar movies always have a strong sense of whimsy or the fantastic, this is the first of their films to lean into high fantasy tropes.
The world of Onward is a world populated by fantastical creatures: Elves, trolls, sprites, dragons, manticores, and others. But magic itself has long since died out. Elven brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot (voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, respectively) are just trying to figure out life like normal kids. Shy, anxious Ian is struggling to get his driver’s license and connect with other kids in school. Meanwhile, surface screwup Barley is taking a gap year and more concerned with his beat-up old van, Guinevere, than making future plans. Both are dealing with the loss of their father – Barley at a young age and before Ian was born – and the perceived absence he has left in their lives.
On Ian’s 16th birthday, their mother reveals their father left a gift for them: A wizard’s staff and a magical spell that will bring him back for 24 hours so he can see who his boys turned out to be – the only problem is, the spell goes awry and they only bring him back from the waist down. The boys embark on a quest to find another magical Phoenix Stone in order to finish the spell and bring their dad all the way back, dragging their half-dad along for the ride, Weekend at Bernie‘s style.
Does Onward live up to the high bar set by Pixar? Does it rank among the studio’s best? Read on for three reasons to see Onward when it hits theaters this weekend.
1. The Charm Factor Of Tom Holland And Chris Pratt
Few actors are more well-liked by hardcore movie fans and casual moviegoers alike than Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. It’s easy to see why – both of them have charisma and charm for days. That charm carries over for the actors even in their animated forms in Onward. Part of that is due to the fact that director Dan Scanlon was smart enough to capitalize on the duo’s real-life friendship, putting them together in a recording booth rather than having them record separately, as is the case with most voice roles. The result is that they have fantastic chemistry in the movie, with each of them easily settling into familiar roles: Holland the nervous, awkward smartypants and Pratt the loveable, clueless screwup. The Peter Parker and Peter Quill archetypes are ones they wear willingly and well, so why not run with it?
The previous experience both has with voicework also adds to their ease with one another. As Hollywood has shifted in the past decade away from trained voice actors in animated movies and toward using high-profile, A-list actors, it’s sometimes made for roles that didn’t feel like the right fit for an animated movie. But both have become excellent voice actors in their own right and, rather than detracting from the animation, their voicework lends Onward a fuller poignancy, particularly in the case of Holland, who shoulders the emotional weight of the movie. It’s simply impossible not to root for the kid, even when he’s playing an animated character.
2. Visually Beautiful But Grounded Animation
Pixar does something interesting with the setting of Onward, combining characters that are 110% based in the fantasy genre and grounding them in a realistic world. That’s not to say the settings of other Pixar movies haven’t dabbled in the real world, the Toy Story franchise being chief among them, but the production design of Onward has a lived-in feel that other Pixar movies haven’t had. It creates a visually interesting juxtaposition where elves chill in old jeans and Converse, fearsome manticores run family restaurants, magical spells are performed next to industrial freeway off-ramps, glittering sprites ravage the snacks section under the harsh lights of a convenience store.
When the veneer of that world is stripped away, the animation style is reinvented. Pixar’s quiet strength is its world-building, and, as it has so often before, it builds two entirely different worlds for Onward: One in which magic has gone underground and fantasy elements are only occasionally glimpsed in arched doorways and windows and ancient maps tacked onto restaurant walls, and another in which deep magic is still at the forefront in a hidden-in-plain-sight world full of ancient carvings and subterranean gauntlets that would be right at home in the mines of Moria in Khazad-dûm. That each feel like they live in the same world and have an equal right to inhabit it and share screen time is a testament to production designer Noah Klocek and the art direction of Bert Berry.
3. It Will Tug At Your Heartstrings, As Pixar Films Do
Pixar is nothing if not excellent at crafting movies that move us emotionally. “Good cry” might have been coined for Pixar, and it’s no different with Onward. Admittedly, its story is disappointingly formulaic in comparison to Pixar’s normally subversive storylines, and that makes the emotional payoff feel too predictable and contrived. But contrived or not, I still found myself tearing up at the climactic scene, even as I understood it wasn’t doing anything new with the story. Anyone who has lost a parent, especially a father, will be impacted by the story of two boys who just want to see their dad again.
And that impact is, like I said above, mostly because of the excellent chemistry between Pratt and Holland. A gasp of upset rippled through my theater during the scene in which they have an inevitable clash and then falling out; contrived or not, people were buying into the emotional pull of the movie and that’s wonderful.
If I were to rank where Onward stands among Pixar films, I would personally put it in the bottom half. The story isn’t as clever or compelling as other Pixar movies, the ideas explored not as unique. But as a simple, straightforward adventure movie that centers itself around the power of familial love, it works. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.
Onward is in theaters on Friday, March 6th. Get tickets here.
