Onward, keeping Pixar weird and wonderful

Keep Pixar weird. If it were a city then this could be its rallying call among some of its citizens. They’re the folk who’ve lived there for a long time and love the place, but they also like the time when it just got started. Onward is a film from brings the oddity back to Pixar does it with an original story that feels unlike anything they’ve done since the late 2000s. In short, Onward manages to assure critics of Pixar that they’re too reliant on sequels or need them to create ‘those’ moments that we’ve come to expect from them.

The cry. It’s the ugly cry that some Pixar films make you do. Some Pixar films give you the pleasant soft tears. The cry is not a bad thing, it’s almost a gauge as to which some folks measure their Pixar films by. For us, Onward produced an entirely new cry: the belly-tensing remembrance cry, also called the fake-out cry or crying part deux. It did this by tweaking the pacing of film just a little bit and rearranging the devices that make the film move to new areas.

It’s worth nothing that I knew nothing about Onward before I saw it.  Granted I saw the trailer a couple months prior to its release, but I wasn’t watching my calendar or planning things around it. From the trailer it seemed a pleasant enough film that was slightly left of center that I’d place in the Disney cannon of films between Zootopia and Brave. It’s not a classic, but it would be entertaining for me and the kids would probably really like it.

What Onward delivers is a film that adheres to the devices that Pixar knows works.  The animation is gorgeous, we expect that and they deliver without fail. The vocal talent is great with Tom Holland and Chris Pratt’s friendship from the Marvel films obviously on display in ways that they can’t in superhero tights.

Onward is also unique for recent Pixar films in that the main characters are youths. That hasn’t happened since 2017’s Coco and before that 2015’s Inside Out. Most of their films certainly are entertaining for children, but don’t feature youths as the main character.

It’s the story that Onward nails. This is a story that they haven’t told before-and I don’t just mean the middle Earth or magic undertones. From the onset we see that Holland’s character in the film is awkward and about to celebrate his 16^th birthday. About the same time we also discover that his dad died before he was born. That’s not the sad part.

His older brother has a couple of memories of his dad, but that’s it. That’s not the part that will make you cry either. Overwhelmingly the film is full of adventure, humor and dialogue that will make you laugh out loud. It’s also about remembering those that we loved and moving on. We should recognize those people in our lives for what they are and not try to fill in our life’s blanks with things that we think we should have.

Again, Onward does this with such a deft hand that the emotional elements take a backseat until the very final act. That’s when the totality of the small things add up to reveal the greater lesson. It’s not a guilt lesson. It’s the subtle act of recognizing and appreciating the little things each day.

The fact that Onward embraces death from the get go and makes a very funny, entertaining move is impressive. Let’s be clear, the character is really dead. They don’t travel back in time or realize that it’s all a dream. There are losses and this film plays the way that we can deal with them perfectly. This is a fun film that is just a little weird that you will love.