Nine years have ebbed and flown since our last visit to Riley’s mind, the setting of Pete Docter’s groundbreaking animation Inside Out. They’ve not been kind. Not universally so and certainly not for the studio that made said film. The signs of a heyday past were already well felt in the Pixar production line, even before their pandemic woes. Streaming has been but the cherry on the Disney stewed ratatouille. In short, Pixar haven’t had a hit since 2019. It’s a Dug eat Dug world out there and the stakes could hardly be higher. Thank goodness for Inside Out 2.
The spirit of transient youth ripples through Pixar’s latest and it’s infectious. From Enrico Casarosa – whose La Luna surely only narrowly missed out on the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2011 – Luca is lovely. Certainly, in its opening act, the film could almost pass for un cortometraggio itself. A self-professed homage to Federico Fellini, Luca pays tribute to those halcyon days of never ending Summer. In a golden haze and fifties aesthetic, Casarosa finds adventure. Most winning is the film’s homespun quality. It’s in the memory born identity of the Italian’s intrinsically personal conceit but also very literally so in the fact that much of the production was completed in the animators’ own homes. You’d never guess.
The Film Blog 