Tag Archives: animated film

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Rainbow Connection

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Arco

by Hope Madden

A child who can’t wait to grow up goes against his parents’ wishes and stumbles head long into a dangerous adventure. Between the family-film formula for its plot and the hand-drawn animation, Ugo Bienvenu and Gilles Cazaux’s Oscar nominated Arco feels like it comes from another time. And that’s a lot of its charm, because the retro-futuristic vibe balances a delightful vintage SciFi quality with a disconcerting reality.

Arco (voice in English by Juliano Valdo, in French by Oscar Tresanini) is a boy from the distant future who, sort of accidentally, travels back in time to 2075 where he crash lands in the life of a lonely little girl named Iris (Romy Fay/Margot Ringard Oldra).

With her parents working in the city, joining by hologram for dinners and bedtime, Iris spends most of her time with a nanny robot named Mikki, and a toddler brother named Peter. But Arco shakes up her world, offering connection and companionship she’s been missing. Together, they’ll figure out how to get him back to his time before it’s too late.

Again, the premise itself is not that unusual. It’s essentially E.T.   

Bienvenu, writing with Félix de Givry, livens up the story with the loony humor of a bumbling threesome bent on finding the rainbow boy. They’d seen a boy just like him as children, and nobody believed them. Now they want proof.

The bowl cuts and rainbow sunglasses mark the characters—voiced in English by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea—as harmless goofballs, but they serve more purpose than simply comic relief.

The miracle the filmmakers conjure with Arco is that the childlike wonder of the characters, the wholesome storyline, and the beautiful animation belie the absolute bleakness of the film’s context. The world around Iris is literally on fire, a danger that Bienvenu illustrates with lush ferocity and amplifies with a daring, feverishly paced third act.

Those two worlds—hopeful wonder and bleak reality—inevitably collide, and though Act 3 resolves as you likely expect it to, it taps into the bittersweet emotion and timeless hope that marks all great family films.

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Furious George

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The Monkey King: Reborn

by Matt Weiner

Stories of Sun Wukong the Monkey King have been a rich source of adaptations for centuries in China. With no shortage of options to choose from, The Monkey King: Reborn isn’t the worst place for Western audiences to start—but be prepared for an uneven journey.

The animated film directed by Yunfei Wang and written by Wang and Xiaoyu Wu introduces the immortal trickster Sun Wukong (Jiang Bian) as he accompanies his master, the monk Tang Sanzang (Shangqing Su), along with some comedic relief from fellow disciples Bajie and Yuandi (He Zhang and Lei Zhang).

Sun Wukong’s mischief sets off a chain of events that brings him into conflict with the all-powerful first demon, with the fate of the world on the line. But as far as motivation and character backstories go, there’s a lot left unexplained for a kid’s cartoon movie. Which is perfectly understandable for a familiar audience, but that coupled with the occasional adult language in the subtitled version makes the target age for The Monkey King: Reborn tough to pin down.

Once the battles get going and Sun Wukong’s puckishness gives way to (ever so slight) growth as a character, it’s a lot easier to go along for the ride. Even with the action, though, the movie is often hampered by the CGI animation. It’s a style that usually has two modes: alarmingly smooth or video game cutscene. Everything is bright, but the vivid coloring can’t mask a flatness that all the characters share. It’s an unfortunate mismatch for Sun Wukong’s elastic portrayal in the story.

The film does offer a deeply emotional third act, with an emphasis on sacrifice, death and rebirth that might make even Pixar think twice. It’s a shame that we got to know Wukong and friends so little within the confines of the film, or else these moments could have made even more of an impact rather than feeling bolted on. Of course, it wouldn’t be a parable without these teachable moments, so it might as well be in the form of a knockdown CGI fight. Sure, it’s entertainment with a heavy-handed message. But it’s entertaining enough.