Note: Like other recent Pixar movies this movie does not have a short film before it. Every time there is not a short film before a Pixar feature, I am extremely disappointed. The short films were often the highlight of going to a Pixar movie for me. These shorts were often times just as great if not better than the features. They helped make going to a Pixar movie feel special to me.
Michael's Movie Grade: B+
An excellent, if flawed Pixar movie.
If there is one thing Pixar knows how to do it is how to open a film. The early scenes of this movie with our main character, Mabel as a small girl show Pixar at its best. As someone who had a very close connection with my grandparents and has a love of animals, I felt myself being incredibly moved by these early scenes. While the rest of the movie doesn't completely live up to the beginning, that is a high bar to clear. After this very strong start, the movie still continues to be quite engaging and fun. Much of this is because of Mabel herself. After the excellent prologue, we see Mabel as a 19-year-old college student. Again, it is so easy to see ourselves in her. She is like many of us were at that age. She is impulsive and this impulsiveness causes her to make a mess of things. Yet she is also very passionate and willing to fight for what she believes is right. In some ways we are jealous of her zeal and wish we could be like her again. However, we also recognize her impulsiveness and remember wrong decisions we made because we didn't take the time to stop and think things through. Because her character captures a 19-year-old so well, we immediately grow an emotional connection to anything that happens in this movie. This emotional connection keeps this film grounded even when its story veers into sci-fi territory.
The basic sci-fi premise of this movie is very clever. While the film itself points out the similarities to Avatar, frankly this movie handles the idea much better than James Cameron's film does. The story telling here is simple more mature, clever and fresh. The story itself moves at a quick pace and never once loses the audience's interest. There is a very strong and fun villain as well. While the action packed climax may go on too long, it is again very creative and entertaining.
The main problem with this movie is that the humor often falls flat. It feels like the filmmakers are trying too hard to be funny. Instead of funny the comedy can come off as too loud obnoxious.
This film's director was Daniel Chong, who is probably best known for creating the Cartoon Network TV series, We Bare Bears. However, he has worked at Pixar before as a story artist. As a story artist he worked on such Pixar movies as Cars 2 (2011) and Inside Out (2015) (my personal favorite Pixar movie). Since Turning Red (2022), he has been credited as part of the Pixar Senior Creative Team. The movie's writer was Jesse Andrews. This is his second film for Pixar (after Luca (2021)). His non-Pixar films include the live action movies Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) and Every Day (2018).
Though it has some flaws, this movie is creative and features the heart that Pixar movies are known for. I strongly recommend this to all Pixar fans.
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