Onward Review

 
PG: Action/peril and some mild thematic elementsRuntime: 1 Hour and 43 MinutesProduction Companies: Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation StudiosDistributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion PicturesDirector: Dan ScanlonWriters: Dan Scanlon, Jason Headley, Keith BuninVoice Cast: Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Ali Wong, Lena Waithe, Mel Rodriguez, Wilmer ValderramaRelease Date: March 6, 2020
Set in a suburban fantasy world, two teenage elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, go on a journey to discover if there is still a little magic left out there in order to spend one last day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him.
At long last, Pixar is back with an original feature film. Hell, we’re getting two original Pixar movies this year. Onward is the first of the two and its concept had me intrigued and excited since its announcement at D23 2017. Dan Scanlon’s (Monsters University) sophomore feature is a buddy comedy set on two teenage brothers in a fantasy world that go on a quest to bring back their deceased father for a full day. 
A signature element that makes Pixar such a reputable animation studio is their ability to fully create worlds beyond our wildest imaginations while wearing their inspirations on their sleeves. Onward has such a strong opening that establishes how the world of magic became the world powered by electricity, which changed the evolution of the fantasy world to the one we live in and relate to today. Some of the set pieces, such as the Lightfoot home or the Manticore Tavern — which is transformed into a Chuck E. Cheese/Dave & Buster’s establishment — are fully realized and inventive. The filmmakers conducted their fantasy lore research thoroughly to bring this fantasy world to life and deliver some really funny jokes, incorporating elements from contemporary suburban society and applying it to the fantasy world. Do I need to express how incredible the animation is? It just goes without saying. It’s Pixar. They are top tier when it comes to quality animation. I will mostly praise the design on the characters, one of my personal favorites being Corey the Manticore. They give her plenty of stylized features to make her design look like a mix between an anthropomorphic manticore and a Black woman. Instead of having a lion mane (like most manticores), she has short curly hair. I loved those small details.At its core, so much of the narrative weighs on the shoulders of the brothers and their journey. While the quest itself is small-scale and disappointingly simplistic, it’s the dynamic of Ian and Barley that makes this narrative effective. You have a neurotic and anxious 16-year-old and his 18-year-old slacker brother who is a fantasy fanatic, which in this world would be probably considered a traditionalist. The dynamic between them is effective in both the comedy and the emotional drama. It’s the major strength of the story and they’re both endearing, especially Ian who feels the weight of loneliness while wishing to meet the dad he never knew, and it just hits you in the feels. Most of the emotional beats stem from Ian and the subtle moments with him move you to tears. When the brothers are on screen together, you feel so much of that familial bond in how they look out for each other, capturing that genuine brotherly love, and it really resonates with you.  
The aforementioned quest itself is pretty basic. A large portion of the movie becomes a road trip, which I’m personally getting tired of since road trip movies follow such a basic formula. There are scenes where the boys have run-ins with cops and bikers. Even though it presents various fun ideas, it’s still undercut by the fact we’ve seen this kind of structure before, especially within its family genre. We just went through this with Sonic the Hedgehog not so long ago. It doesn’t really head towards its full potential and it doesn’t take full advantage of the world itself. How would an urbanized city be structured in this fantasy world? How would that function? Even most of the humor is rooted in sight gags regarding the suburban fantasy world and they emphasize it so much in the first half of the movie that it becomes tiresome.
The voice performances are great and I do like a ton of these characters, but I was initially annoyed by Barley. It doesn’t have anything to do with Chris Pratt’s performance because he does a really good job. I think it’s in his nature. Barley is a traditionalist of sorts, for he’s obsessed with how creatures behaved in the old days and he abides by a fantasy game, which he thinks of as a bible of sorts, and it did get under my skin for the first half of the movie. But as the film progresses, you get used to his personality and feel for him. He still shows nothing but love for his younger brother and is pretty wise at times. 
We gotta stop holding Pixar to such a high standard for every single original feature. They’ve done a ton of original movies that were either hit or miss in the past and that’s okay. They don’t have a perfect track record — they broke it with Cars 2 and maintained a fair share of inconsistency for years. Onward is flawed and has story issues and that’s okay! I would rather get Pixar movies where they return to their original flavor with an imaginative concept and a solid execution rather than blatant cash grab sequels like Finding Dory and The Incredibles 2. Onward is good ole’ quality Pixar™ and that’s a great thing. It’s okay that Onward is not one of their best. It’s very good, especially for families. Rating: 3.5/5 | 76%