Luca is a very cute movie which ought to be extremely watchable to most kids and moms, and is likely going to press just the right emotional buttons with certain viewers to make it one of their favorite films. It could be the colorful designs of the fish people, or the quaint old small-town Italian setting, the simplistic coming-of-age story, or the supposedly unintentional gay overtones that catch your fancy—but speaking personally, Luca was something I more so appreciated than being emotionally invested. Here I’ll be going over which aspects of the film interested me, which parts kept me from falling in love with it, and what I think could possibly be taken from this film by looking at it through certain lenses.
The story of Luca centers around a small seaside Italian town in the fifties whose shore happens to be nearby an underwater village of self-described sea monsters. These fish people transform into humans when they stop being wet, but many of them—importantly including the pre-teen Luca’s parents—do not go ever ashore for fear of the alien culture of the surface-dwellers. Luca is a responsible boy, herding sheep-fish and keeping far from the shore, until an older boy called Alberto lures him ashore and entices him with the freedom of being away from his parents and exploring on land via dreamy devices like the vespa.
Anime fans from the early 2010s may remember a similar concept from the P.A Works preteen drama Nagi no Asukara, which had five fish children grappling with interpersonal relationships and double-lives across 26 episodes, and I do think it makes an interesting thought to imagine someone Luca’s age connecting with the movie, and then going on to enjoy Nagi no Asukara a couple years later when their social relationships have gotten more complicated; because even if I don’t think that show is nearly as tightly-made as the film Luca, I do think its more robust cast of relationships could’ve made this film more interesting and less stereotypical.
On a technical level I can only levy very pedantic complaints at this very nice-looking film. I wasn’t surprised when director Enrico Casarosa cited Hayao Miyazaki as an influence in behind-the-scenes videos, because I could feel it in the way that color and light are used in the underwater scenes at the start, while also immediately being full of this shaking feeling that I wanted to watch Ponyo again. All I mean to say really is that this isn’t a technical benchmark film like Ponyo, or like some of the Disney films we’ve had from Tangled onward, but it is still a very pretty movie that accomplishes the art team’s stated goal of a “postcard brought to life,” filled with nostalgic and gorgeous sunsets. My biggest complaint is sameness in the faces that can’t help but bring to mind that hyper-modern Amazing World of Gumball/Steven Universe inspired cartoon look.
I especially appreciate the way Luca himself is animated. His friend Alberto puffs his chest out and awkwardly projects what he believes to be confident bravado, but Luca cant help timidly keeping his arms in front of his chest, even though he is perfectly personable and easily excited like a little puppy. The two of them have adorably effective chemistry that perfectly captures the intensity of young friendships based around shared secrets and ambitions, and which doesn’t have to read as gay at all, but doesn’t have to not read that way either.
The film goes a great distance in developing the friendship between Alberto and Luca and establishing their emergent lifestyle by the time Luca’s parents find out about these surface excursions and sentence him to stay in the Deep with his uncle for the summer; but the culture of the sea monsters is underdeveloped by comparison. The first time we’re told that going to the surface is dangerous, Luca’s grandma is clear that she actually goes up there regularly, and she assists Luca on escaping throughout the movie. We never meet any sea monsters outside Luca’s family besides Alberto, so even though we’re told it’s a cultural taboo to go to the surface, it ends up feeling more like Luca’s parents are just absurdly overprotective when we see more characters comfortable with visiting the surface than not. Overall I wish there would’ve been more detail in the underwater settings to flesh out what is unique about the lives of sea monsters as compared to humans, both in lifestyle and culture.
One cultural detail which confused me at the start of the film is the injection of Italian words into everyone’s speech, which eventually makes a kind of sense when we realize that we are on an Italian shore, but still leads to some very weird dialog that I have to get pedantic about because it distracted me so much throughout the film. While the performances of the sea monster family given by Jacob Tremblay, Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan are enjoyable, none of them are Italian nor effect an Italian accent in the film except for when pronouncing the specific Italian words in the script or one-another’s names. When we finally make it into town, the first person we meet is an over-the-top stereotypically elitist Italian bully played by an actual Italian dude in a thick accent, followed by a girl named Giulia played by Emma Burman, who isn’t effecting an accent, but is saying way more Italian stuff laced into her speech and has a thoroughly Italian-sounding dad. She also does this running gag where she says Santa Mozzarella or other Italian cheese as a replacement for the exasperated “Santa Maria,” in-between making the Italian hand gesture. You know the one.
Now I’m not calling this film racist or something—the Italian director created the story based on his youth and the real best friend he had growing up in Italy, even if the regular American Pixar team wrote the actual screenplay. Mostly, Im just confused. There were times when characters said something in Italian and then again in English as if they had to translate for one-another, even though everyone slips Italian into their speech, so at some point I stopped guessing who should be speaking what language. If there had been a line explaining that just certain aspects of human culture had trickled into the sea monster world, that might’ve made sense; and then we could’ve had a subplot about which aspects of human culture are alien to the sea monsters, and which have been taken and adapted in new ways to fit their underwater living spaces; but instead we get way too many prayers to saints of cheese.
Later on the film does touch on some pretty gripping melodrama. When Giulia inevitably ends up seeing Alberto’s transformed body, Luca’s reaction, without spoiling too much, is shockingly cruel, and forgiven kind of easily considering how traumatizing it could’ve been. This also leads to an effecting revelation about Alberto’s believably tragic home situation. In the end, and this is a spoiler but not a surprise, when the bully tries to lead a lynch mob on the sea creatures, Giulia’s dad who supposedly would kill anything that swims on sight stands up for the boys that he’s been training for the big race in the most heartwarmingly humane way, and kind of saves the movie imo.
The staff have called the sea monsters a broad metaphor for feeling different, and were quick to address the gay subtext many viewers projected onto the film, clarifying that while it isn’t intended to be a gay film, having been based around the director’s own childhood friendship, it is also perfectly fair to see keeping the sea monster secret as a metaphor for any kind of closeted existence being freed in the end. When the sea monsters are accepted by the town, a pair of old ladies that you can easily decide are a lesbian couple or don’t also reveal themselves, reinforcing whatever feelings some of us might have been bringing through the film already. I know some people don’t like or ‘count’ ambiguously-gay films, but I have a firm admiration for anything that is successfully broad enough to reflect a multitude of audience experiences.
I kind of skipped over that it’s also a movie about a bike race, with a whole subplot about Luca’s insane parents finding different ways to terrorize all of the children in town with fish out of water antics. At first I thought it was preposterous that they considered it safer to send their kid into the ocean depths than to the surface world, but as their clumsiness comes to light across the length of the film it became charmingly silly. Luca has plenty of comically cartoonish moments including delightful physics warping and reality breaking that takes advantage of the cartoon medium without breaking anything that matters in the story. Luca and Alberto’s ability to become instantly dry might make the gimmick of their transforming when wet especially silly, but it also leads to a bunch of fun moments. All in all I think the tone of the film is its greatest success and most engrossing aspect, where the script and scantly grounded setting could sometimes pull me away. It was hard to say that it wasn’t a good movie, even if I only enjoyed it but so much.
Luca is a film I would recommend to anyone already curious about it and not really to anyone that isn’t immediately grabbed by either the artwork or premise, and I would give it a 6/10.