ONWARD (2020)

ONWARD (2020)

Tagline:  Cometh Soon.

(Animation, Adventure, Comedy) [PG]

Right. Sorry. It's a Guardian Curse. If your boys take the gem, the curse will rise up and assume the form of a mighty beast, and battle your sons to the... Ooh. Well, how do your boys do in a crisis?

Tidbit – Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this was the first Disney film to be released digitally while it was still in theaters. The movie had only been released theatrically for 10 days when the 15 Days to slow the spread initiative started. That move shut down theaters in almost every state. 

In this one, the story involves a world full of fairytale creatures. They all live very human-like lives. Most magic that used to exist has faded away giving way to technology. After the death of their father Barely and Ian Lightfoot are given a gift from their father by their mother. The gift is supposed to help engage a spell that gives their father 1 day to walk the earth and see how his sons have grown up. The two sons end up following clues to go on a quest and see their father's “full-body” after the spell only brings back half his body. 

Casting wise it was pretty cool that they got two “Avengers” involved utilizing the voice talents of both Chris Pratt and Tom Holland. There are some other big-name voices in this as well including John Ratzenberger, Tracey Ullman, Lena Waithe from READY PLAYER ONE, and the extremely versatile Octavia Spencer. 

This is a Disney flick, so the animation is absolutely incredible. A lot of the animation doesn’t even appear animated, it looks digitally rendered over real scenes. It all works very well, but honestly, I disliked the design work in this thing. Almost none of the characters “look” very well thought out. For example, if you knew nothing about this movie and looked at Ian and Barley, you could tell people they were aliens and they would just believe you. Mainly because they don’t really look like trolls or whatever the heck they are supposed to be. I get that they wanted a cartoony style, but you can tell what most Disney characters are supposed to be. Visually the coolest thing in this movie might be the van the two main characters are driving around in. At least the van looks like a rad 80’s style van. Oddly the saddest part of this movie for me actually involved the van. 

Conceptually I felt like this movie had a ton more potential than what the final product gave us. The idea of a world with magic and dragons and unicorns etc intrigued me when the previews came out, but the execution and storyline were sadly pretty weak. I do like that the movie seemed very pro-young-male and painted the boy's mother and father in a positive light, but outside of that, this movie is largely flat and lacks the kind of storytelling that keeps you interested. Rather than getting some cool moments of humor between the two brothers, for instance, they spend the vast majority of this movie having conversations that are as irritating as having two young overbearing teenagers in the back of your car on a cross country road trip. This movie has some nods to the D & D role-playing game, but for me, that really didn’t fix its issues. 

There are some cool moments in this movie and the animation is great, but overall this was a miss for me. I have to give it a 3 out of 7. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF WALT DISNEY PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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