Onward

ONWARD   **1/2

Dan Scanlon

2020

IDEA:  In a fantastical world where the use of magic has fallen into abeyance, a sullen teenage elf is given an incredible gift for his birthday: a staff that has the ability to bring back his dead father for a day.

BLURB:  Onward is a heavily formula-driven movie, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In its fantasy quest narrative, the film makes clear its debts to the pop-cultural legacy of the Hero’s Journey, with particular homage paid to Spielbergian domestic/adventure drama. Family conflict and loss serve as relatable, resonant metaphors for social change, as Ian and Barley’s quest to resurrect their deceased father parallels the desire to restore magic – and its attendant “primitive” wholeness – to a world that has become fractured by modern capitalism. Scanlon and the other writers have some fun with this idea, especially in the case of the corporatized Manticore, but there’s the nagging feeling Onward doesn’t go far enough in exploring its possibilities. Instead, it prioritizes the emotional arcs of its fraternal protagonists, who, for all the charm Tom Holland and Chris Pratt imbue them with, remain largely static in their roles as fledgling hero and goading, cocky mentor, respectively. The film fills their scenes with banal platitudes about being brave and believing in yourself, which it then strangely conflates with blithely reckless, transgressive behavior (turns out, you can do a whole bunch of stupid and deadly stuff if you have magic to save you). And yet, Onward is sweet, beautifully animated, and builds to a poignant conclusion. Its imagination is spottier than it should be, but the core of fraternal love that drives it is intimately conveyed and, in some ways, magical enough.