After a funny bit where Alberto teaches Luca to walk, reminiscent of “Put One Foot In Front of the Other” from Santa Claus is Coming to Town, we learn the rules: On land, the sea creatures become real humans, who can eat, breathe, run around, do whatever. Alberto leads Luca to the surface of the water and then to land where something remarkable occurs-both he and Luca turn into real boys. Then, one day, he is confronted by another sea creature, an outsider named Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), who’s about his age, maybe a bit older. Luca spends his days herding fish and daring himself to penetrate the surface of the water-verboten in his family-but he’s basically a nice boy, who listens to his parents. The Italian fisherman who dot the surface of the sea think the creatures dwelling below are scary sea monsters-in fact, Luca and his family are as afraid of the humans as the humans are of them. It’s not completely clear what kind of creatures Luca’s family are-not quite mermaids and mermen (they look more like anthropomorphic fish then half human/half fish hybrids) but similar. Our hero is Luca Paguro (Jason Tremblay, as cute in animation form as he is in real life), a young sea creature who lives with his parents and grandmother under the sea.
It’s about many things-sea creatures, pasta, Italian fishing villages, Vespas-but most of all, it’s about the friendship between two boys. Luca, the latest film from the redoubtable animation studio Pixar, directed and co-written by Enrico Casarosa, is such a film. These works often contain a kind of carefree nostalgia tinged with melancholy, which is what makes them so effective.
A theory: One of the reasons why there are so many films and TV shows that celebrate male childhood friendship-from Goonies to Stand By Me to Stranger Things, and the list goes on-is because adult men long to have that kind of closeness with their peers, but are discouraged by society against it.