Onward (2020)
REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER
The downside first. Okay, let’s say it. Much of the movie is plain weird.
What makes it so?
The two lead characters, elf brothers, go on a quest accompanied by their deceased father.
However, pop has only half materialised, from the waist down. The quest is to find a gem with which they might rematerialise with magic the whole father, so that the younger of the brothers might spend another single day with the dad he never met.
But, given dad is only half-formed, the brothers find themselves on their journey either dressing him up like a whole but floppy man to pass him off as alive (think The Invisible Man meets Weekend At Bernies), or they walk him around as a pair of legs on a dog leash.
Funny, right? Actually... no.
The trouble is all the visual emphasis on a pair of legs in tightish chinos / khakis goes to the groin. There is nothing we can do about this. It’s how we look at things; it’s how trousers are designed. When pop was in half-man mode, I couldn’t take my eyes off his crotch. I took to thinking about the animators building the model (one always designs from the inside out, the bones and joints, the flesh and anatomy, the clothes). Was I alone in the cinema worrying about this? Watching the light and shade fall onto his groin and how that affected the shape and structure of the trousers as they moved or held a pose. Yikes! This is not what the story wanted me to be doing! (I kept thinking of Jack Nicholson in THE LAST DETAIL demonstrating how to wear the US Navy-issue pants so the crotch hangs just right.)
There are other things that threaten to derail ONWARD.
The colour palette is too much. A world that is full greened and blued, with every colour in-between being saturated, means that no single colour has any value. The film is visually tiresome. There was not one scene where colour was deployed in any meaningful way.
The supporting characters are good fun. The Mom (Julia Louis Dreyfuss) and a Manticore (Octavia Spencer) - body of a lion, wings, scorpion tail - join forces to follow the brothers and rescue them from the kinds of trouble that befall any quest; while the boys’ step-father, a scene-stealing centaur cop called Colt Bronco, also gives chase. However, one is left with the feeling that these characters don’t get enough screen time. They were not properly integrated into the story and they should have been.
The title itself, Onward, doesn’t really connect either. You can see thinly why it might have been a neat working title (this dull single word trend that follows on from TANGLED and FROZEN), but it also contributes to the feeling that this time Pixar hasn’t quite fully realised its film.
But now the upside. And it’s a big upside. It’s why I am recommending the movie.
The final act.
There’s a moment at the end of the second act where our young hero, Ian Lightfoot, voiced by Tom Holland with all the prepubescent uncertainty of a young Peter Parker, realises what has just happened through the course of his quest. This one simple scene brings the entire film together. (No spoilers). It’s like an emotional bomb - finally - gets detonated. Then more questy stuff happens and the film takes off! It soars, actually. A dragon appears and he’s excellent. A terrific creation! (More from him, please).
And then the final scene - the point of the movie, the materialisation of the father - is handled beautifully and pays off every single cent of investment.
The third act elevates ONWARD.
Chris Pratt is superb as the older brother, Barley Lightfoot. MCU fans, rather than think of Barley as Peter Quill to Holland’s Peter Parker; think of him as Quill doing his Thor impersonation in ENDGAME to Holland’s Parker.
There’s more fun to be had with the accompanying film. It’s not another Pixar show-off thing or experimental short. Rather, it’s Disney showing off, reminding us that, alongside owning Pixar and Marvel, they also own Fox. The short this time around is a THE SIMPSONS tale featuring Maggie the baby and her first crush, and it is glorious and funny.