It may suffer in comparison to Pixar’s classics, but Onward stands on its own as a funny, heartwarming and extremely-well animated family adventure. The background animation here is stunning. I couldn’t tell if it was a real background or an animated one. It’s that seamless.
This also a completely original movie. It’s not based on a franchise or an already existing idea. As I understood, the director’s (Dan Scanlon) real-life situation was the inspiration for this movie and this is what he said to say about:
”The story is based on my relationship with my brother, and our connection with our father who died when I was about a year old. For me, he was always a mystery. A family member sent us a cassette in which our father said only two words “hello” and “goodbye”. But for my brother and me, it was just magic. It was a stepping stone for this movie. We’ve all lost someone, and if you could spend just one day with this person – it would be an exciting opportunity. We knew that if we wanted to tell this story, we had to place this movie in a world where you are actually able to create this amazing opportunity.”
That’s the perfect description of the plot without giving away any of the major spoilers for this movie. I urge you to go see it with your kids in theatres. This is a movie that the whole family can find something to appreciate about. I was very emotionally invested in this movie, which Ordinary love failed to do as much. There are also a lot of joke attempts and some of the jokes felt out of place or just unfunny in general, but most good humor came from Octavia Spencer’s character The Manticore.
I’m giving this movie 8,5/10*
One more thing. I watched this movie with a whole bunch of kids and some teenagers/mid-late twenties… The teenagers/young adults just kept talking and talking throughout the whole movie and also checked their phones a couple of times… And the kids? The most respectful audience members as can be.
