Sorry Pixar, Onward left me looking backwards

This weekend was a miserable milestone for British politics. We saw a desperately defiant Prime Minister and his cabinet work harder in three days to save the job of one special adviser, Dominic 'No Regrets' Cummings, than helping the country fighting a deadly disease in more than three months. 

So I thought I would cheer myself up with a Disney-Pixar movie. What could go wrong?

SPOILERS BELOW

Today, another milestone was reached; today I found a Disney-Pixar film that I hated.  Yes, hey put out the Cars series, but at least they had some decent gags (the cow-tipping scene anyone?).

Onward suffered a run-ending blow when it became a victim of cinema closures worldwide, a mere two weeks into its release in the UK. Rather than release it on its own subscription-based platform DisneyPlus+ (launched here on 31 March), Disney-Pixar decided to recoup some of its losses by releasing it to buy on Amazon Prime video, hoping that people would be so enamoured of the brand that they would automatically buy it. 

Not quite as it happens, as huge swathes of  the UK population suddenly found themselves out of a job and wondering how to pay their mortgages and utility bills.  That said, I waited two months to buy it, to see if it was worth the positive reviews it received in the media. 

My general reaction was 'meh'. 

The story follows two elven brothers living in a literal fantasy suburbia, who have to complete a quest to retrieve a magical gem, which will allow them to resurrect their dead father for 24 glorious hours.  Dealing with death and remembrance should be a shoe-in, given the studio's roaring tirumph with Coco. It wasn't. 

Based on Dan Scanlon's own experience losing his father at a very early age and effectively being raised by his mother and brother, he only had one voice recording to know his father by (which is nicely mirrored in the film.  My own father died 20 years ago this July when I was 17, and unlike Scanlon's avatar Ian, the younger of the two brothers (played by Spiderman: Far From Home's Tom Holland), I have memories to look back on and smile (or even wince, it wasn't a perfect relationship). I was raised an only child, so none of older brother Barley's (played by Guardians of the Galaxy's Chris Pratt) incessant risk-taking and general bumming around town with role-play games related to me. 

Another thing; it would have been his 74th birthday today. 

But should my own personal experience really dictate my reaction towards the film? After all, I have never suffered a miscarriage (Up) or met my grandparents (Coco). Yet both of those projects left me swimming in tears. 

Several things left me feeling decidedly flat. Firstly the voice direction. It felt as if Scanlon, Holland and Pratt walked into the recording booth and the following happened: 

SCANLON: Tom, from you I want Peter Parker, but with even less confidence. And Chris? 

(Pratt looks up expectantly, imagining elven-Peter Quill)

SCANLON: I want...... Andy Dwyer.

It jarred. I was looking at a young adult Jack Black version of an elf, and I was hearing Chris Pratt at his most, dare I say, Prattish (could they not afford Jack Black? It would have worked better with Jack Black. But perhaps Dreamworks won't let him come over).

After managing to resurrect just Dad's bottom half, the hastily put-together quest-by-rote in Barley's spray painted van Guinevere (this guy is a Big Quest Fan) is a rather predictable affair, with motorcycling sprites, a fire, and Barley shouting randomly worded spells at Ian to get them out of the trouble that he himself put them in. Add in a subplot featuring their frantic mother (a valiant effort by Julia-Louise Dreyfuss) trying to warn them about a curse (of course) joined by a once-famed, tattooed manticore (an uncomfortably "sassy" Octavia Spencer). Honestly, that road trip seemed like the more fun one one. 

As for the payoff, I was left not so much empty, as I was fuming. It was rushed, confused and a complete farce. In short, Ian never even gets to meet his father. Instead he watches his him materialise from a distance in the dying sunlight and speak for a few moments with Barley, while trapped in a pile of concrete-dragon rubble. And before you have time to digest how horribly unfair Ian's sacrifice is, the apparition is gone after about 30 seconds, with Barley looking just a little sheepish. 

So there it is folks. After 30 years of solid hits, Disney-Pixar has managed to put out a generic imitation of one of its own movies. On that note, I'll leave it there and will ask Amazon if they do refunds for movies. They do over on Audible.