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Pixar’s “Luca,” an Italian-set animated fairy tale concerning two young sea monsters exploring an unknown human world, offers the studio's hallmark visual splendor, yet fails to venture outside of safe waters. After story artist credits on big-time Pixar titles like “ Ratatouille ” and “ Coco ,” “Luca” serves as Enrico Casarosa ’s first time in the director’s chair. Borrowing elements from “ Finding Nemo ” and “ The Little Mermaid ,” Casarosa’s film follows two young Italian sea “monsters,” Luca ( Jacob Tremblay ) and Alberto ( Jack Dylan Grazer ). The former spends his days shepherding the little fish populating his seabed village away from fishing boats. But at night, as he lies awake in his seaweed bed, he dreams of living on the surface. 

Looming against his desires are his mother ( Maya Rudolph ) and father’s ( Jim Gaffigan ) fear from living by a human, sea-monster-hunting oceanfront village. Nevertheless, dry world affectations fall to the ocean floor: an alarm clock, a playing card, and a wrench. These items draw Luca closer to the surface. As does Alberto, an older, confident amphibian boy who now lives alone in a crumbling castle tower by the beach, and claims his father is temporarily traveling. 

If you’re wondering how these creatures with fins, scales, and tails can could live on among humans without being discovered, writers Jesse Andrews (“ Me and Earl and the Dying Girl ”) and Mike Jones (“ Soul ”) have a tidy solution for that. Rather than an evil witch granting him a human appearance, a la “The Little Mermaid,” the sea monsters here can naturally, magically turn mortal. Their ability isn’t controllable, however, as touching water reverts their skin back to their real scaly exterior. But for Luca, such power dangles greater temptation over him.  

Once on dry land, Alberto and Luca form a quick bond. They dream of buying a vespa and traveling the globe together. Their plans nearly come to a halt, however, when Luca’s frightful parents threaten to make him live his oddball Uncle Ugo ( Sacha Baron Cohen , essentially using his Borat voice in a fish) in the trenches. Instead, Luca runs away with Alberto to the town of Portorosso. There, they come across Giulia ( Emma Berman ), a red-headed, independently minded tomboy with dreams of winning the Portorosso cup—a traditional Italian triathlon consisting of swimming, cycling, and eating pasta—and her one-armed, burly father Massimo ( Marco Barricelli ). In a bid to earn enough money to buy a Vespa, the boys pair with Giulia to win the cup away from the evil five-time champion Ercole Visconti ( Saverio Raimondo ) and his goons while an entire town lays a bounty for sea monsters on their heads.  

The most distinct current coursing through “Luca” is freedom: that’s certainly what the Vespa represents, the ability to be unrestricted not just by sea, but by land too. The other thread winding around the folklorish narrative, however, is identity, or the people who truly are behind our public faces. The villainous Ercole is initially and seemingly well-loved, as though ripped from an Italian magazine. We soon discover that his love, somewhat like Gaston in “Beauty and the Beast” (another Disney flick attuned to true identities) actually rules through intimidation. The measured eroding of his care-free, buoyant persona into the narrative's real monster is predictable yet satisfying. 

The premise of the film also literally disguises Luca and Alberto as humans amongst the fish hunting Portorosso community. But in a deeper sense, many secrets lurk within Alberto, from the whereabouts of his dad to his general knowledge. He portrays himself to Luca as a world-weary traveler, the kind of friend who swears they’ve been to a place a million times, but has only walked past it. He also tells the impressionable Luca how the stars are actually fish swimming in a vast black ocean, that school is unnecessary, and to ignore his “Bruno” (or the tiny scared voice inside your head). His outsized confidence papers over his clear insecurities, especially as Luca first grows closer to Giulia and later thinks for himself. 

Similar to Ercole’s unsurprising turn to villainy, Alberto’s bubbling insecurities imbue the film's second half with an air of fait accompli and drag the initial animated delight to the deep depths of boredom. Why do another narrative about a girl stuck in the middle of two best friends? Why cast Giulia’s rich arc, a competitive girl pitched as an outsider, to the back seat? Without exploring her narrative, the primary story flows through the motions. And the ending, meant to recover some of her spark, only serves to tether her importance to the two boys. That is, the guys win, but really, we all win.  

“Luca” certainly isn’t without its charms. A visual splendor of blue and orange lighting blankets over the seaside setting, giving the sense that if I were to merely hug the screen it would warm me for days. Minute bits also land, like the fish that make sheep sounds, and the hilarious ways Luca’s mother and father careen through the town trying to find their son, throwing random children in the water. And Dan Rohmer’s propulsive, waltzy score recalls the fairytale vibes he breathed in “ Beasts of the Southern Wild ” on tracks like “ Once There Was A Hushpuppy .” But “Luca” retreads too much well-cultivated ground and reworks so many achingly familiar tropes as its best qualities sink to a murky bottom. While some material may hit with younger audiences, “Luca” makes for Pixar’s least enchanting, least special film yet.    

Available on June 18 on Disney+. 

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Film credits.

Luca (2021)

Rated PG for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence.

Jacob Tremblay as Luca Paguro (voice)

Jack Dylan Grazer as Alberto Scorfano (voice)

Emma Berman as Giulia Marcovaldo (voice)

Maya Rudolph as Daniela Paguro (voice)

Jim Gaffigan as Lorenzo Paguro (voice)

Marco Barricelli as Massimo Marcovaldo (voice)

Saverio Raimondo as Ercole Visconti (voice)

Sandy Martin as Grandma Paguro (voice)

• Enrico Casarosa
• Jesse Andrews

Cinematographer

• David Juan Bianchi
• Jason Hudak
• Catherine Apple

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‘Luca’ Review: Calamari by Your Name

Pixar takes a trip to the Italian coast in this breezy, charming sea-monster story.

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By A.O. Scott

A lot of movies can be described as fish-out-of-water stories, but few quite as literally as “Luca.” The title character, voiced by Jacob Tremblay, is an aquatic creature who lives with his family off the Mediterranean coast of Italy. The undersea equivalent of a shepherd, tending an amusing flock of sheeplike fish, Luca has a natural curiosity that is piqued by his mother’s warnings about the dangers that await on dry land.

Like many a Disney protagonist before him — Ariel, Nemo and Moana all come to mind — he defies parental authority in the name of adventure. (His mom and dad are voiced, in perfect sitcom disharmony, by Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan.) According to the film’s fantastical version of marine biology, sea monsters turn human on terra firma, though their fins and gills re-emerge quickly on contact with water. Luca is a bit like a mermaid and a little like Pinocchio, a being with folkloric roots and a modern pop-culture-friendly personality.

On a rocky island near his home, he meets Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), a fellow changeling and a wild, parentless Huck Finn to Luca’s more cautious Tom Sawyer. After a season of idyllic, reckless antics, mostly spent building scooters out of scraps and wrecking them in the surf, the friends make their way to a nearby Ligurian fishing village, where more serious peril — and more complicated fun — awaits.

“Luca” was directed by Enrico Casarosa, whose warm, whimsical aesthetic also infused “La Luna” (2012), his Oscar-nominated short . Unlike some other recent Pixar features, this one aims to be charming rather than mind-blowing. Instead of philosophical and cinematic ambition, there is a diverting, somewhat familiar story about friendship, loyalty and competition set against a picturesque animated backdrop.

So not a masterpiece, in other words. But also not a pandering, obnoxious bit of throwaway family entertainment. The visual craft is lovely and subtle — the orange glow of Mediterranean sunsets; the narrow streets and craggy escarpments; the evocations of Italy and Italian movies. If you look closely, you’ll catch a glimpse of Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina. The friendship between Alberto and Luca, built around the fantasy of owning a Vespa and threatened by a desperate act of betrayal, carries a faint but detectable echo of “Shoeshine,” Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist fable about two Roman street urchins who dream of buying a horse.

That’s one of the saddest movies ever. “Luca” has a few notes of gentle melancholy, but it isn’t the kind of Pixar movie that will turn adult viewers into bawling, trembling wrecks. Luca and Alberto’s bond is complemented and complicated by Giulia (Emma Berman), a fellow misfit (though not a sea monster) who brings the boys home to her fisherman father (Marco Barricelli) and recruits them to become her teammates in the town’s annual triathlon. (The three legs of the contest are swimming, cycling and pasta eating. Viva l’Italia!)

Their nemesis is Ercole (Saverio Raimondo), a preening bully with two nasty sidekicks, who threatens Luca and Alberto with humiliation and, worse, exposure to the harpoons of the sea-monster-hating townsfolk. At the same time, Luca is increasingly drawn to Giulia and the human world she represents, which makes Alberto jealous.

But the movie is too busy with its many plots — and too enchanted by its summery, touristic mood — to linger over bad feelings or grim possibilities. It’s about the sometimes risky discovery of pleasure, and it’s a pleasure to discover.

Luca Rated PG. Harpoons and hurt feelings. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Disney+ .

A.O. Scott is a critic at large and the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Pixar’s ‘luca’: film review.

An amphibious young sea creature spends a memorable summer on land in an Italian Riviera village in this coming-of-age story about friendship and acceptance, streaming on Disney+.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Italian animator Enrico Casarosa, who was nominated for an Oscar for his 2011 Pixar short film La Luna , incorporates his enchantment with the moon and stars in different ways in his first feature, Luca . This captivating coming-of-age tale of a young male sea creature curious about life on dry land shares plot foundations with The Little Mermaid , Splash and Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo . But its Mediterranean flavor and disarming lessons about the value of friendship and acceptance provide fresh charms, while the breathtaking beauty of the film’s environments both underwater and above the surface brings additional rewards. It’s not canonical Pixar, but it’s as sweet and satisfying as artisanal gelato on a summer afternoon.

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Debuting on June 18 exclusively on Disney+ , the film forgoes the more conceptual musings of last year’s Soul to return closer to a boys’ adventure narrative like that feature’s immediate predecessor, Onward . But that fantasy quest, with its echoes of Dungeons & Dragons role-play games, got bogged down in frantic over-plotting, while Luca ’s comparative storybook simplicity, albeit with magical elements, should endear it to young audiences.

Release date : Friday, June 18 Cast : Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, Marco Barricelli, Jim Gaffigan, Peter Sohn, Lorenzo Crisci, Marina Massironi, Sandy Martin, Sacha Baron Cohen Director : Enrico Casarosa Screenwriters : Jesse Andrews, Mike Jones; story by Enrico Casarosa, Jesse Andrews, Simon Stephenson

Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay ) is a regular kid who just happens to have gills, a seahorse tail and a head of what looks like wavy coral. He lives with his family — caring but bossy mother Daniela ( Maya Rudolph ); more laid-back dad Lorenzo ( Jim Gaffigan ); and chill badass Grandma (Sandy Martin) — in the waters outside the fictional Italian Riviera fishing village Portorosso, where sea monsters hold a prominent place in local lore. In what seems a delightful nod from Casarosa to Finding Nemo , the opening shows Luca busy with his daily chores, herding a school of fish that bleat like sheep, and greeting other colorful members of the marine community. When Luca strays too far, his mother warns: “The curious fish gets caught.”

While the time frame is unspecified, the look of the village and the human characters’ clothing in Daniela Strijleva’s gorgeous production design clearly indicate the 1960s, as do the Italian pop hits of artists like Mina, Gianni Morandi and Rita Pavone, sprinkled in among Dan Romer’s gentle melodic score. A quick glimpse of a film still of Marcello Mastroianni also evokes the era.

When Luca starts finding objects lost from fishing boats — an alarm clock, a playing card, a gramophone — his eagerness to explore above the surface gets the better of him. His pluck is bolstered by a new friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), whose experience with amphibious transitions between land and sea modes helps Luca through the bumpy initial stages of learning to walk upright. Alberto lives in the ruins of a stone tower that he has filled with found treasures.

The one that most captures Luca’s dreamer imagination is a metal sign proclaiming, “Vespa is freedom,” advertising the popular moped. That instant obsession yields one of a handful of lovely fantasy sequences, in which Luca and Alberto zoom through sun-kissed fields where wild Vespas frolic amid the yellow rapeseed flowers; from there, they fly up into the heavens where the stars are constellations of fish.

With such distractions keeping Luca above the surface and away from home, disciplinarian Daniela decides he needs to be sent to stay with creepy Uncle Ugo ( Sacha Baron Cohen in a funny cameo), a deep sea-dwelling translucent glow-fish, for the rest of the summer. But Luca rebels and runs off with Alberto to “the human town,” where the big challenge is to stay dry long enough to pass for real boys and keep their aquatic forms undetected. Rain is not their friend.

They have a hostile encounter with preening bully Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo), who doesn’t appreciate outsiders but loves his gleaming red Vespa more than life itself. Ercole never tires of boasting of his repeat wins of the Portorosso Cup, an annual triathlon event comprising swimming, pasta consumption and a final bicycle leg. He’s also relentless in his mockery of Giulia (Emma Berman), a tomboy fisherman’s daughter who has continually failed in her attempts to beat Ercole and end his “reign of terror.” But when Luca and Alberto join her to form an underdog team, Giulia approaches the competition with new spirit.

The script by Jesse Andrews ( Me and Earl and the Dying Girl ) and Mike Jones ( Soul ), like all the best Pixar movies, laces touching life lessons and delicate helpings of sentiment into what’s essentially a caper. While Luca’s worried parents venture onto land to track down their runaway son, Giulia’s burly fisherman dad (Marco Barricelli) more or less adopts them after they prove unexpectedly savvy in finding the best spot to fish. This turns out to be emotionally uplifting for Alberto especially, who hides the hurt of abandonment beneath his chipper bravado.

Luca’s quaint sea-creature interpretation of the night sky prompts Giulia to introduce him to a telescope and her school textbook on the universe, which feeds his hunger for knowledge. The story’s outcome — when the boys’ inevitable exposure as feared and reviled sea monsters makes them vulnerable to Ercole’s harpoon — serves as a gratifying teaching moment for kids about being open to otherness rather than rejecting it based on old prejudices and superstitions. And Luca’s display of loyalty and courage fills his parents with a pride they perhaps have never before shown. The movie’s smattering of Italian language also provides welcome cultural exposure for young audiences.

The voice cast is solid down the line. Young actors Tremblay, Grazer and Berman make an engaging trio, capturing the giddy excitement of fast friendships in the preteen years; Rudolph and Gaffigan deploy their well-honed comedy chops with deft understatement; Martin makes a droll impression whenever she weighs in as a blowsy grandma with street-smart secrets; and Raimondo is suitably obnoxious as the arrogant showoff, begging for his comeuppance. Fans of Baron Cohen should hang around for his amusing reappearance in a post-credits sequence.

But the real magic of Luca is its visuals. The character designs are appealing both in the marine world and on land, and the richness of the settings in both realms is a constant source of pleasure. The play of light on the gloriously blue water’s surface is almost photorealistic at times, while a sunset spreading its orange glow over rocks on the shoreline makes you yearn to be there. Likewise, the town, with its terracotta walls absorbing the summertime heat, lines of crisp laundry strung between apartment buildings, people strolling and kids playing in the central piazza, and old women staking ownership of regular spots from which to survey the passing traffic. The lush green surrounding countryside provides yet more eye-popping splendor.

The distinctions separating a Pixar creation from a Disney animated feature seem to be blurring in cases like this, but Casarosa has a winning knack for folding the wonder of fairy tales into the joys of old-fashioned storytelling. The Genoa native’s obvious deep-rooted affection for life in simpler times on Italy’s northwest coast gives the movie a warming injection of real heart.

Full credits

Production company: Pixar Animation Studios Distribution: Disney+ Cast: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, Marco Barricelli, Jim Gaffigan, Peter Sohn, Lorenzo Crisci, Marina Massironi, Sandy Martin, Sacha Baron Cohen Director: Enrico Casarosa Screenwriters: Jesse Andrews, Mike Jones; story by Enrico Casarosa, Jesse Andrews, Simon Stephenson Producer: Andrea Warren Executive producers: Pete Docter, Peter Sohn, Kiri Hart Directors of photography: David Juan Bianchi, Kim White Production designer: Daniela Strijleva Music: Dan Romer Editors: Catherine Apple, Jason Hudak Sound designer: Christopher Scarabosio Visual effects supervisor: David Ryu Animation supervisor: Michael Venturini Character supervisors: Beth Albright, Sajan Skaria Casting: Kevin Reher, Natalie Lyon

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Luca movie review: Pixar’s latest is an emotional story about friendship and acceptance

Luca movie review: directed by enrico casarosa, this pixar film is not just a looker, it is also a funny, entertaining, and deeply emotional story about friendship and acceptance..

Luca cast: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Marco Barricelli, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, and Jim Gaffigan. Luca director: Enrico Casarosa Luca rating: 4.5 stars

Pixar’s Luca tells a coming-of-age fantasy story set in the picture-perfect summer paradise that is Portorosso, a small town along the Italian Riviera. Directed by Enrico Casarosa, a storyboard artist who makes his debut with the film, Luca is not just a looker, it is also a funny, entertaining, and deeply emotional story about friendship and acceptance.

The titular Luca is a sea monster who lives in the depths of the sea with his parents and grandmother. He has always dreamt of exploring the world above the surface, fascinated by motorboats gliding on the water. His mother’s warning about what humans would do if they saw his true form, however, keeps him reluctant.

For most humans in Luca, sea monsters are a myth, limited to children’s storybooks, but some believe they do exist and bring out their pitchforks, metaphorical or literal, at the mere mention of them.

When not in contact with water, they can disguise themselves as humans, but even a single splash of water is enough to blow their cover.

An apprehensive Luca is dragged to the coast of an abandoned island by his vivacious new friend Alberto, a sea monster who has been stealing objects from passing boats. He teaches Luca the fundamentals of human life, like walking, gravity and the almighty Vespa, which he claims can take a person anywhere they wish to go.

Alberto, in a sharp contrast to introverted, hesitant Luca, is fearless, even a little reckless, and is never afraid to try out new stuff. The two bond over their interest in human objects.

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After a few failed attempts to ride on a Vespa made out of scrap, the two friends decide to swim to Portorosso to acquire the real thing. They befriend a girl called Giulia and decide to take part in a race that will win them money, which, in turn, can be used to buy the Vespa that they desperately want.

Pixar movies have explored complex themes in a way that is lucid enough for little ones. Luca continues this glorious tradition. It is a celebration of childhood friendships, but also tackles the theme of acceptance of the ‘other’. While the film makes it clear that the bond between Luca and Alberto is platonic, their relationship and the horrified reaction by humans to their true appearance can be interpreted as echoing the experiences of the LGBTQ community. The story is open to multiple interpretations — sea monsters can serve as the metaphor for any marginalised group.

Luca is not the best Pixar movie ever made, but it does come close. The themes and even a few plot elements may seem familiar, but the film is good-looking and has enough substance that it hardly matters.

The characters are endearingly written. The friendship at the centre of the film, between Luca, Alberto and Giulia, is loveable, sweet and feels organic. The starry voice-cast, with names like Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Marco Barricelli, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, and Jim Gaffigan, does not disappoint either.

But the true star of Luca is the visuals. The imagery in Luca is not skin deep. The almost outrageous attention to detail that is common to each Pixar movie is very much present here, and can be appreciated only during a second viewing. With the stunning landscapes with vivid blue water, the sun-soaked town and its paved streets, the vibrancy that pervades everything, and gently rolling hills in the backdrop, Luca is one of the most beautiful films you will see this year. There is also a painterly, textured look to some of the scenery that is certainly a deliberate artistic decision, and it blends well with rest of the aesthetic.

Luca is a continual delight, a film that will make you feel warm, fuzzy and wanting for more. The film’s length of 96 minutes — considerable for a Pixar feature, mind you — feels transitory, because you want this vicarious visit to coastal Italy to go on and on.

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In Theaters

• March 22, 2024
• Jacob Tremblay as Luca Paguro; Jack Dylan Grazer as Alberto Scorfano; Emma Berman as Giulia Marcovaldo; Marco Barricelli as Massimo Marcovaldo; Saverio Raimondo as Ercole Visconti; Maya Rudolph as Daniela Paguro; Jim Gaffigan as Lorenzo Paguro; Sandy Martin as Grandma Paguro; Giacomo Gianniotti as Giacomo; Marina Massironi as Mrs. Marsigliese; Sacha Baron Cohen as Uncle Ugo

Home Release Date

• June 18, 2021
• Enrico Casarosa

Distributor

Movie review.

There’s something human-y about Luca Paguro.

Oh, sure, there’s something fishy about him, too. But that only stands to reason, given his scales and fins and whatnot. Where Luca comes from—somewhere in the briny deep near Italy—that’s positively normal. While his father raises competition show crabs and his mother frets, Luca shepherds the family’s flock of fish. (Which would make him a fisherd , I guess.) And even though the Paguro family can venture onto dry land—rumor has it that Grandma used to hit the town on weekends—why would they? It’s populated by monsters, by gum, monsters who’d want nothing more than to skewer creatures like them and hang them up above the fireplace.

But while Luca’s terrified of the land and those who dwell there (as his mother says he should be), he’s curiously drawn to it, too.

As well he should be.

So says Luca’s new friend, Alberto. He’s a little older than Luca, and yeah, he came from the sea himself. But Alberto lives all by his lonesome on dry land, and he considers himself “kind of an expert” on the whole terra firma thing. When he yanks Luca out of the water, he knows full well the kid’s going to change into a human form—just like he did. And he knows that human form can take a little getting used to, what with the whole clothes and air and walking thing and all.

“Walking is just like swimming,” Alberto lectures. “But without fins. Or a tail. And also there’s no water. Otherwise, it’s like the exact same thing.”

Clearly, Alberto knows everything about everything, and Luca idolizes him. But after a few days up top and one late night getting home, Luca discovers his worried mom and dad waiting up for him—along with Uncle Ugo, the family’s toothy, see-through relative from deeper waters. Apparently, Uncle Ugo is there to take Luca to the deep, black, sunlight-deprived sea, about which he paints a less-than-exciting picture.

 “There’s nothing to see anyway,” Ugo says. “Or do. It’s just you and your thoughts—and all the whale carcass you can eat.”

Luca loves his mom and dad. But he sure doesn’t want to go with Uncle Ugo. He’s enchanted with the land above—its sunshine and gravity and, most especially, its motorized scooters. And so—encouraged and accompanied by Alberto—Luca runs away, away to the human town of Portorosso, filled with dry cobblestoned streets and colorful buildings and fish-eating residents. Residents who all seem to own several harpoons. Residents who’ve heard about some sea monster sightings and are on high alert for anything that might be the least bit sea-monsterish.

The two new human boys in their midst certainly look normal enough—as long as they don’t get wet. But any little bit of water brings out their true natures, dip by dip, drip by drip. Luca and Alberto sure better hope it never rains.

Positive Elements

“Silencio, Bruno!”

So Alberto and Luca shout when they feel their fears and doubts getting in the way of their grand plans. And there’s some merit to getting Bruno to be quiet. Luca is a coming-of-age story, and to grow up demands that you take some chances. People who always live in fear and doubt—who always worry what might happen—wind up living pretty small, disappointing lives. Can you imagine what the Christian Church would look like if the Apostle Paul listened to his own version of Bruno?

Still, it’s important to distinguish the real voices of warning in your head from the voice of Bruno, and that’s not always easy. The movie does at least make a feint in that direction. When Alberto and Luca barrel down a very steep hill on a not-very-safe bike, Luca expresses, shall we say, concern.

“That’s Bruno talking!” Alberto shouts.

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s just me!” Luca says. And turns out, Luca’s right.

Luca also learns (as if he didn’t know already) that his parents really just want him to be safe and happy. And even though Luca envies Alberto’s apparently parent-free life at first, he eventually realizes that he’s the lucky one.

In Portorosso, they meet a new friend, Giulia, who also has a protective father—a burly, fearsome fisherman who never let his own missing arm slow him down. And while he seems deeply interested in hunting down any sea monsters he comes across, the depth of love he has for his daughter, and the kindness he shows to strangers, is rarely in doubt.

One more word: Luca is, in some ways, a nearly literal “fish-out-of-water story,” in which Luca, Alberto and even the very human Giulia often feel like outsiders. But together, these “under-the-dog” kids push against the town’s bullies and work together to compete in a local race.

Spiritual Elements

We see a local cleric at times, though he’s typically not engaged in any real priestly duty. Giulia has a habit of “cursing,” under her breath when Luca or Antonio get a bit exasperating. But she actually combines the Italian word for saint with foodstuffs. For instance, she might exclaim something like, “Santo Gorgonzola!”

A card that Luca finds features a picture of a prince or knight holding a cup. It’s likely a reference to Italian playing cards (which, in the southern part of the country, have suits of swords, cups, coins and clubs). But it could conceivably be a reference to a tarot card called the Knight of Cups, which can be a symbol for purity, friendship and romantic quests.

Sexual Content

In Luca’s first few transformations into a human, he appears shirtless with sort of a grass wrap around his middle. (Luca’s parents, when they come to town to find him, initially transform into the same sorts of get-ups that sport a bit of animated skin.) We learn that Giulia’s parents are together anymore; it’s unclear whether they are now divorced or if they perhaps weren’t married in the first place.

It’s rare we point out something that isn’t in the movie, but this seems worth a note: Some observers have opined that Luca is essentially an LGBTQ fable. They thought they saw Luca and Alberto’s transformation as a metaphor for being gay, and their close relationship something of a budding romance (name-checking, in fact, director Luca Guadagnimo’s Call Me by Your Name as a comparison point).

That interpretation isn’t borne out in the movie itself, where Luca and Alberto are just great childhood friends. And Luca director Enrico Casarosa rejects the comparison out of hand. “I love [the director’s] movies and he’s such a talent,” Cararosa told Yahoo! Entertainment , “but it truly goes without saying that we really willfully went for a prepubescent story … this is all about platonic friendships.”

Violent Content

The movie’s villain is a bully by the name of Ercole Visconti who means to do much more than snap towels at his enemies (and sometimes his friends). He punches someone smack in the gut, knocks people off their bikes and threatens plenty of people (and other things) with serious injury—sometimes brandishing a spear or harpoon. (Luca uses a spear of his own to get Enrico to back off from one of his friends though, too.)

Enrico even demands one of his two acolytes to repeatedly slap the other. And when one of Ercole’s “friends” dives underneath Ercole’s precious Vespa to prevent it from hitting the ground, Ercole is far more concerned with his scooter than his injured pal underneath.

The whole town of Portorosso would seem, visibly at least, to harbor deep antipathy for denizens of the deep. Carvings adorn old buildings around the square, depicting brave fishermen killing fearsome sea monsters. Giulia’s father thwacks the head off many a fish. Townsmen guard a harbor from sea monsters by holding and displaying many a horrific barbed instrument of fish capture.

Luca, Alberto and Giulia all are subject to slapstick violence throughout the film. (We won’t catalog all of that content, but as an example, both Luca and Alberto demonstrate gravity by leaping off the top of a ruined tower, tumbling through the branches of a nearby tree and landing in a heap at the tree’s base.) They also really like to ride either bikes or homemade “Vespas” down very dangerous inclines and off ramps, sometimes leading to injury or, in one case, nearly to death. (Luca kicks apart their fragile homemade scooter in mid-air—sending himself and Alberto into the water below rather than landing on the rock that had been directly underneath them.)

Giulia’s cat—named Machiavelli—learns Luca’s and Alberto’s secret early on, and he attacks them at least twice before they learn to mollify him with fish. (Luca and Alberto both bear scratches on their faces after one such attack.) Luca’s parents—trying to find Luca in a town full of normal humans—start throwing kids into fountains and pelting them with water balloons. A physical fight breaks out between two characters.

Crude or Profane Language

None, but the film does include a few winks toward profanity. For instance, Luca’s mother exclaims, “Ehhh, sharks” as an s-word stand-in. Luca himself utters a “holy carp” at one point.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Giulia’s dad seems to drink wine for dinner one evening.

Other Negative Elements

Luca’s coming-of-age quest kicks off with a massive bit of disobedience. It begins when Luca runs off from his fisherding duties (leaving a stone replica of himself to fool the fish, and even his mother at a distance), but it culminates in Luca just running away—hoping that he and Alberto can buy a real Vespa and travel the world, barely giving his parents a second thought. You could argue that Luca’s parents even reward him at the end for his disobedience … or you could say that Mom and Dad just realized that they’d made some mistakes of their own and were doing their best to correct for them.

Obviously, Alberto and Luca lie pretty much to every human they meet for a while. Their first jabs at conversation with people go seriously awry. (Their greeting ends with the word “stupido,” which causes a couple of old women to hit them both with their purses.) They have atrocious table manners at first, having no clue how to use a fork. We hear that last year, during an important annual tournament (that includes eating a plate full of pasta), Giulia vomited.

Luca’s parents steal clothes to blend in. A couple of characters each do something hurtful to the other. We hear that Luca’s grandma not only went into town, but played cards there, too. She lies once to keep Luca out of trouble, and she seems to passively approve of his disobedience. Alberto picks his nose in one scene.

In a Disney+ missive, Luca director Enrico Casarosa says that he drew from his own life to make this movie.

“My best friend Alberto was a bit of a troublemaker, [while] I was very timid and had a bit of a sheltered life—we couldn’t have been more different,” Casarosa said. “We were also a bit of ‘outsiders,’ so it felt right to use sea monsters to express the idea that we felt a little different and not cool as kids. Alberto pushed me out of my comfort zone, and pushed me off many cliffs, metaphorically and not. I probably would not be here if I didn’t learn to chase my dreams from him.”

It’s in that relationship that we find both the core beauty of Luca —and its core reason for caution.

Outside some slapstick animated violence and a couple of winking asides to bad language, Luca has very few content problems to navigate. No, it’s not quite as squeaky clean as Pixar’s best movies— Toy Story and Finding Nemo come to mind—but when we point out some minor worries here and there, we’re really picking at undersea nits. And while this is a movie meant for kids (and is thus not quite as emotionally or philosophically rich for adults as some Disney/Pixar films) Pixar still knows how to craft a great, resonant story. It might just nurse out a tear or two from even jaded moms and dads.

But as real and as beautiful and as true as the friendship between Luca and Alberto can feel—and as important as sometimes those imperfect friendships can be in our development—we can’t escape another truth: Alberto’s kind of a bad influence. Luca knows it. His parents certainly discover it. And while Alberto comes to life as a fully formed, three-dimensional character who could really, really use a father figure, I do think it’s worth pumping the bicycle brakes on the movie for just a moment here.

In the real world, a metaphorical Luca might be just what a metaphorical Alberto needs to turn his life around. But just as easily, Alberto could help lead Luca to a childhood filled with detention.

Luca , the film, makes a passing reference to Pinocchio , and it seems fitting. In Disney’s classic 1940 version, the story of Pinocchio becomes a wall-to-wall cautionary fable about keeping the right sort of company. When Pinocchio falls in with a ne’er-do-well named Lampwick—who, like Alberto, is just a little too cool for school—the two are nearly turned into donkeys. (Pinocchio escapes, but just barely. Lampwick isn’t so lucky.)

Luca is, in some ways, the flip side of Pinocchio. His story illustrates how a little bit of trouble can lead to growth, and how the wrong sort of company can turn out all right in the end. It’s a more generous movie, one that emphasizes grace and compassion over Pinocchio’s stern lectures.

But sometimes as parents, it can be hard to tell just what story your kid is in.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Pixar’s Luca is the perfect summer movie

Sun, swimming, and sea monsters.

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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The best way to watch Luca , the latest feature from Pixar, is when you’re that very particular kind of tired that comes from a long day at the beach. I recommend pulling out a projector so you can watch it outside, preferably as the sun starts to set, and ideally with some gelato to accompany you. What I’m saying is: this is just about the perfect summer movie.

Okay, sorry, so what is Luca actually? At its most basic, it’s a coming-of-age story about sea creatures, directed by Enrico Casarosa (who previously directed Pixar’s 2011 short La Luna ). Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is a young monster who lives a sheltered life on a family farm under the sea, largely oblivious to the human world above him. Most of what he knows comes from his parents, who tell him that the “land monsters” are “here to do murders.” Still, despite — or perhaps because of — this sense of danger, he’s fascinated by the human world.

He collects random objects, like playing cards and alarm clocks, and dreams about what the world outside of the ocean is like. (He’d make fast friends with Ariel.) Then one day, he meets another young monster named Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) who happens to live on the land. Luca’s budding obsession with the human world reaches its zenith when he spots a poster on Alberto’s wall that reads simply: “Vespa is freedom.” The two decide right then and there that they have to have a Vespa.

The big twist in Luca is that the sea monsters change into a human form when they’re out of the water. So Luca and Alberto are able to pretend to be human when they visit a nearby Italian seaside village in search of the scooter of their dreams. Eventually, they come up with a plan: with the help of a new human friend named Giulia they enter into a triathlon so that they can use the prize money to buy a Vespa. (In case you forgot the film takes place in Italy, one of the triathlon events is dedicated to eating pasta.)

Read next: How Pixar created Luca ’s adorable, transforming sea monsters

The core of the movie is the budding friendship between Alberto and Luca. The two are near polar opposites. Luca, cautious yet imaginative; Alberto, brash and prone to taking risks. They push each other in different ways. Alberto helps Luca out of his shell with daring bike rides and other stunts, while Luca shows Alberto that there’s more to life than just having fun. For the most part, Luca ’s story follows the expected beats. The two grow close, eventually clash, and struggle to deal with the influence of Giulia on their relationship. They adapt to the human world as they train for the competition — Luca learns how to ride a bike, while Alberto struggles to operate a fork — and discover new pleasures like gelato. At the same time, there’s a constant sense of danger; any time it rains you worry that the boys will be found out, which is particularly scary given how much the villagers hate sea monsters.

But the predictable nature of Luca never bothered me, because it’s just so charming. There’s a real tactile sensation to the animation. The rippling effect when a sea monster transforms into a person is jarring yet almost satisfying, like popping a piece of bubble wrap. 

Luca has the vibe of a stop-motion production, with exaggerated characters that look like they’re made of toothpicks and plasticine. It all helps add to the movie’s cozy nature. At the same time, because this is a CG film, there’s a fluidity, particularly when you see the sea creatures swimming like otters. (The water looks incredibly lifelike.) Seeing the pair of friends race through the water, jumping like dolphins, and changing forms constantly in the process, creates an incredible sense of freedom.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Luca is that it features two fully realized worlds. The quaint, sun-drenched village looks like a 1950s postcard come to life and just makes you want to laze around in the sun for a few hours. Yet Pixar has an uncanny ability to imagine the details of hidden worlds, whether that’s the lives of toys or the land of the dead — or, in this case, the day-to-day experience of sea monsters. You’ll see Luca shepherding fish on a farm, and his father doting over crabs ahead of a Westminster-like competition. When Luca’s trips to the surface are discovered, his parents threaten to send him to live in the deep sea with his translucent anglerfish uncle. Instead of presenting the sea monsters as strange or terrifying, they’re immediately shown as humanity’s underwater counterparts. Just, you know, with purple gills.

Like many Pixar films, Luca isn’t exactly groundbreaking. This is a family-friendly story that’s largely easy to predict. But that doesn’t take anything away from the big emotional beats. When the boys fight, it’s tragic to watch. When they help a lonely Giulia discover friendship, it warms your heart. The story wraps up with a very neat and tidy message about acceptance, and yet I couldn’t help but feel a little weepy at the end. Luca sets a very particular mood, and it’s one that fits right in with a warm summer night.

Luca premieres on Disney Plus on June 18th.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Sweet fish-out-of-water story about friendship, adventure.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Viewers will learn a bit about the deep, dark bott

It's easy to be scared of things you don't underst

Luca is curious, intelligent, kind, and empathetic

Central message is about accepting differences, in

Kids run away from home, go against rules, and put

Language is largely of the insult variety: "stinki

A Vespa scooter is central to the story and is pre

Parents need to know that Luca is Pixar's film about two sea creatures who leave their watery homes to discover the wonders of the surface in a small village on the Italian Riviera. It's a sweet coming-of-age story about courage, curiosity, empathy, perseverance, teamwork, and friendship—specifically, that of…

Educational Value

Viewers will learn a bit about the deep, dark bottom of the ocean, as well as gravity and different astronomical facts. Reading books and trying new things are encouraged as ways to learn about the world.

Positive Messages

It's easy to be scared of things you don't understand, but don't judge others based on their differences. You don't have to keep aspects of yourself hidden to be accepted—find those who love you for who you are. Curiosity, empathy, perseverance, and teamwork are great character strengths. It's important to have dreams and goals, as well as a plan to make them come true. Friendships and loyalty are important, as is making sacrifices for those you love. Be curious and learn as much as possible about the world.

Positive Role Models

Luca is curious, intelligent, kind, and empathetic. He wants to learn as much as he can about the surface and beyond. He lies to his parents and puts himself in dangerous situations but atones for his mistakes. Alberto is courageous, as well as a bit reckless, but he's loyal to Luca. He doesn't follow rules, but he doesn't have a parental figure to set any guidance, either. Giulia is clever and shows great perseverance. She also stands up for herself and others and isn't afraid to be herself, even if she doesn't fit in. The three work together as a team to overcome obstacles.

Diverse Representations

Central message is about accepting differences, in this case mostly between species. All human characters are White/Italian; movie is set on the Italian Riviera. Giulia's father, Massimo, is separated from her mother and shares custody. The arrangement is seen to be smooth and happy, and he's supportive and caring toward Giulia. Massimo is also a positive representation of limb difference, having been born with one arm. His character isn't defined by the difference, but by his great skill in fishing and cooking and his kindness toward the kids. Alberto's father isn't shown on-screen but is reported to have abandoned him, and Alberto often behaves recklessly and can feel intensely let down by others as a result. But the idea of chosen family and developing new family structures is shown when Alberto is taken in by Massimo. Giulia is a strong female character who's not restricted by gender stereotypes. She shows a thirst for adventure and has the courage to stand up for herself and her friends. That said, Italian stereotypes are used, particularly with the villain Ercole, who has slicked-back dark hair and a neatly clipped mustache, and arrogantly sits astride his Vespa, gesturing exuberantly and saying "Mamma Mia!"

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Kids run away from home, go against rules, and put themselves in dangerous situations. Physical comedy includes characters lightly hurting themselves as they jump off cliffs, fall off bicycles (with stars shown above head as though dizzy), and get attacked by a suspicious cat. Physical scuffles include pushing, punching, biting, and slapping. In one sequence, a villager repeatedly throws a spear at Alberto and Luca; others threaten them, and they're the target of mean behavior, with verbal bullying including words like "jerk" and "trash." Characters have heated arguments, raising their voices. A kid has to punch his uncle in the heart to get it started again, and his organs are seen through his skin briefly.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language is largely of the insult variety: "stinking," "stupido," "jerk," "idioti," "trash," "loser," "shut up," "pathetic," "what's wrong with you," and "bottom feeder," as well as the swearing stand-in "aw, sharks." The Italian word "mannaggia" is also used, meaning "damn." "Oh God," as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

A Vespa scooter is central to the story and is presented as very aspirational/glamorous. Like all Disney films, there's plenty of off-screen merchandise, including apparel, toys, games, and more.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Luca is Pixar's film about two sea creatures who leave their watery homes to discover the wonders of the surface in a small village on the Italian Riviera. It's a sweet coming-of-age story about courage, curiosity, empathy, perseverance, teamwork, and friendship—specifically, that of Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay ) and Alberto ( Jack Dylan Grazer ). There's a bit of silly body humor (nose- and ear-picking), as well as occasional insults in both English and easily understandable Italian, like "trash," "stupido," "idioti," and "jerk." Kids run away from home, lie to parents, and don't follow rules, putting themselves in dangerous situations. Physical comedy includes injuries from stunts like jumping off of cliffs and trees, riding a bike too fast down a hill, and getting in tussles. Scared villagers wield spears and harpoons, and one throws his at the main characters. Another character likes to use his big knife to chop up fish, much to Luca and Alberto's dismay. Parents and kids who watch together will be able to discuss the movie's appealing setting and its themes, particularly the importance of evaluating others for who they are, not because of their differences, background, or heritage. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 64 parent reviews

First Pixar Disappointment

Teaches kids to lie and do dangerous stuff, what's the story.

LUCA takes place at the Italian seaside, where the titular character is the son in a family of sea creatures. Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay ) follows his parents' ( Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan ) rules not to go near the dangerous surface, until he comes across a stranger collecting treasures. Luca follows the boy, Alberto ( Jack Dylan Grazer ), to the shore, where they both transform into humans. Luca and Alberto become fast friends, sharing dreams and plans that involve what Alberto claims is the best prize among humans: the Vespa scooter. When Luca's family catches on that he's been hanging out above water, they threaten to send him to the depths of the ocean with his angler-fish Uncle Ugo ( Sacha Baron Cohen ). Frightened, Luca and Alberto run away to the nearest human town, Porto Rosso, where they meet outgoing Giulia ( Emma Berman ), who tells them that they could buy a Vespa with the cash prize from the town's annual race: a triathlon involving swimming, cycling, and eating pasta. The boys team up with Giulia—who's come in second several years in a row to an overconfident, rude villager named Ercole (Saverio Raimondo)—and move in with her and her intimidating fisherman father (Marco Barricelli). They must also do everything they can to keep from getting wet, lest the sea-monster-fearing villagers try to spear them.

Is It Any Good?

This heartfelt, gorgeously animated adventure is a short and sweet reminder of sun-filled summer days with new friends. The setting of Luca is so vivid that audiences may well want to book a flight to the Italian Riviera for some amazing pasta, clear seas, and the charm of winding cobblestone streets, marble fountains, and quirky townsfolk. Tremblay is a wonderfully expressive voice performer, making Luca's intellectual curiosity and general awe come to life. Grazer's Alberto is a confident and impetuous counterbalance to Luca's thoughtful and initially hesitant personality. Berman also impresses as Giulia, who really wants to win the race but is even more excited to make new friends. The supporting Italian cast is strong, as are Rudolph and Gaffigan, who at this point are almost default choices as funny parents. And audiences will laugh aloud at Baron Cohen's brief but hilarious role as Luca's uncle from the deep.

Luca 's themes are reminiscent of those in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory , The Little Mermaid , and even Onward . The boys turn into friends who are more like brothers, discovering both the joys and the dangers of the human world, and their adventure is filled with memorable views under the sea. Tender, sweet, and also funny, with silly physical comedy and an amusingly suspicious cat (Giulia's kitty looks just like her dad, right down to what looks like a mustache), the movie is full of warmth and has a few moments that tug at the heartstrings. It's also lovely to see a single father who belies his intimidating appearance by cooking delicious meals, teaching the boys the skills needed to fish, and supporting his daughter in her dream to compete in Porto Rosso's big annual race. Families with kids of all ages will enjoy this adorable addition to Pixar's excellent list of films.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Luca 's message about family and friendship. What does Luca learn about what makes a family? Kids: Who do you consider to be part of your family?

How do characters' actions demonstrate curiosity , empathy , teamwork , and perseverance ? Why are those important character strengths ?

Discuss how the movie portrays Giulia's father's limb difference. Does it impact his character? Why is it important to see people with disabilities represented in popular culture? Can you think of other examples?

Did you find any parts of the movie scary or upsetting? If so, why? What bothers you more: danger/action, or conflict between characters?

A central theme of the movie is difference and accepting others for who they are. Why is this an important message? What differences might it extend to in the real world?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : June 18, 2021
• Cast : Jacob Tremblay , Jack Dylan Grazer , Emma Berman
• Director : Enrico Casarosa
• Studios : Pixar Animation Studios , Walt Disney Pictures
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Friendship
• Character Strengths : Curiosity , Empathy , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 95 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : May 18, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Pixar’s Luca Is a Literal Fish-Out-of-Water Fantasy Intent on Saying Something

Portorosso, the fictional setting of the new Pixar movie, Luca, is a bright daydream of Italy. Cobblestoned streets wind their way up hills; residents pepper their speech with ejaculations like “ Santa Mozzarella! ”; and each year the kids compete in a triathlon of swimming, cycling, and pasta eating. The pastoral charm doesn’t stop at the shoreline. Underwater, sea monsters live in a community that’s just as quaint, herding sheeplike fish and cultivating rows of kelp. They keep out of sight of the “land monsters,” who have an alarming habit of hoisting harpoons and decorating their plaza with images of fishermen defeating oceanic menaces. But how could anything dark happen in an animated world so mild?

When Luca (Jacob Tremblay), the movie’s young sea-monster protagonist, first gets yanked out onto the sand by his friend Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), the moment thrums only with a sense of undefinable possibility. Alberto looks on, unimpressed, while Luca sputters and gasps and transforms into a human boy as the water dries off his body. “First time?” Alberto asks. “Of course it is!” Luca retorts. “I’m a good kid!”

When Luca — which was directed by Enrico Casarosa (of the short La Luna ) and written by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones — was announced, the internet was quick to call out parallels between this film and Call Me by Your Name. Although no one would expect to get anything like the peach scene in a PG-rated Pixar movie, Luca does seem to deliberately invite comparison with director Luca Guadagnino’s romance, right down to a protagonist who shares his first name. Like Call Me by Your Name, Luca is the story of two boys taking a journey into the intoxicatingly forbidden during a summer in Northern Italy. It also involves a lot of frolicking around in shorts, riding scooters, and expressing jealousy when one of the pair starts spending more time with Giulia (Emma Berman), the spunky local girl Alberto and Luca join up with for the big race. That those boys happen to be sea monsters who revert to their scaly form whenever they touch liquid doesn’t discount the undercurrents.

Luca is not, ultimately, a love story. But it is a story that’s explicitly about otherness and self-discovery. The symbolism lends itself to interpretations of queerness, or as an allegory of assimilation. Alberto and Luca run away to live in Portorosso after Luca’s loving but overprotective parents (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) attempt to send him to live with his deep-sea-dwelling Uncle Ugo (Sacha Baron Cohen). The kids have to pass in a community they expect would react with hostility if they were ever perceived as they wholly are. Alberto harbors a fantasy of perpetual escape in which he and Luca will use the prize money from the race to buy a Vespa and go on a never-ending road trip, while Luca, to Alberto’s dismay, starts to wonder if there’s a place where he can learn from and live among the humans — even though there are some, like town bully Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo), who wear their intolerance proudly. “What happens when she sees you? When anyone sees you?” Alberto demands when Luca starts talking about following Giulia to school.

Luca is so intent on meaning something that it only ever halfway inhabits the delightfully colorful world it lays out. We never get a deeper understanding of the history between the sea monsters and the humans beyond some hints that there has been far more interaction than Luca was raised to believe. We never find out why Luca’s mother thinks the world is so dangerous; the narrative just needs her to be paranoid, and so she is. Alberto’s wayward dad remains an offscreen squiggle, a means of bolstering the surrogate-parent relationship Alberto begins to develop with Giulia’s father, a stern but kind fisherman whose bushy eyebrows are identical to his bushy mustache. Luca falls in love with astronomy after Giulia shows him the heavens through a telescope, but his burgeoning desire to study exists in contrast to nothing in particular, because there’s no sense of what future would have been available to him had he stayed underwater.

One of the side effects of children’s films becoming more progressive, aware, and careful is that they can lose some of the dimensionality they had before, when they were awash with subtext that didn’t always feel coherent or intended. Luca collects artifacts from the world above — much like a certain Disney mermaid with whom he shares a corporate umbrella — while never encountering anyone as defiantly memorable as Ursula, a villain based on the drag queen Divine. The film would rather evoke Guadagnino and Hayao Miyazaki, especially the latter’s Porco Rosso ; the 1992 movie is an obvious touch point. But Luca doesn’t have the lived-in texture of a Studio Ghibli production, either, that palpable sense of a universe extending beyond each animated frame. What it does have are some groovy Italian pop songs and a setting as pleasant as a summer afternoon. The light glimmers off the surface of the ocean without any worry of going too deep.

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Review: ‘Luca’ is Pixar, Italian style — and one of the studio’s loveliest movies in years

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The key theme of “Luca,” Pixar’s funny and enchanting new feature, is the acquisition of knowledge — and the realization of how liberating, if painful, that knowledge can be. The charming insight of this movie, directed by Enrico Casarosa from a script by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, is that nearly everyone has something to learn. Luca (Jacob Tremblay), a kid who finds himself in a strange new land, must master its mystifying rules and traditions to survive. He has an impetuous friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), whose know-it-all swagger is something of a put-on: Like Luca, he’s lonely and adrift in a world that turns out to be bigger, scarier and more wondrous than either of them could have imagined.

For their part, the animators at Pixar have imagined that world with customary ingenuity and bright-hued splendor, which makes it something of a shame that most audiences will have to watch the movie on Disney+. (It’s playing an exclusive June 18-24 engagement at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.) The filmmakers’ most exquisite visual creation here is Portorosso, a fictional village on the Italian Riviera presumably not far from Genoa, Casarosa’s birth city, which inspired his 2011 Pixar short, “La Luna.” In the director’s hands, Portorosso plays host to a parade of well-worn but lovingly deployed cultural clichés. The townsfolk navigate the sloped, cobblestoned streets on bicycles and Vespas and enjoy a diet of gelato, pasta and seafood. And speaking of seafood: The fishermen who trawl the surrounding waters always do so with harpoons at the ready, lest they encounter one of the fearsome sea monsters rumored to dwell just offshore.

The movie confirms and debunks those rumors in the opening minutes, plunging beneath the surface and into a neighborhood of underwater dwellers whose webbed and scaly humanoid bodies might well seem fearsome at first glance. But within seconds of meeting Luca — whose natural curiosity spurs varying degrees of protectiveness from his worried mom (Maya Rudolph), absent-minded dad (Jim Gaffigan) and slyly antiauthorian grandma (Sandy Martin) — it’s clear that there’s nothing remotely monstrous about him or the mildly cloying, sometimes hilarious family sitcom he initially seems to be inhabiting.

Fortunately, “Luca” enters brighter, bolder territory at precisely the moment Luca himself does. In a scene that brings to mind Pinocchio experiencing his first moments of sentience or Ariel testing out her new legs, Luca swims to the surface and discovers a world of wonderment, including the wonderment of his own body. Outside his aquatic habitat, his scales, fins and tail magically vanish and he takes on human form. Every sea creature like him possesses these adaptive powers of disguise, including his new buddy, Alberto, who’s been living above the surface for a while and gives Luca a crash course on ambulatory movement, direct sunlight and other dry-land phenomena.

That makes “Luca” a fish-out-of-water comedy in the most literal sense, governed in the classic Pixar tradition by whimsical yet rigorously observed ground rules. A splash of water will temporarily restore Luca and Alberto (or parts of them) to their underwater forms — a shapeshifting conceit that allows for a lot of deftly timed, seamlessly visualized slapstick mischief. Early on, at least, the two friends have little to fear as they run around a deserted isle, basking in the sunshine and dreaming of future adventures on the open road. Only when their curiosity gets the better of them do they muster the courage to sneak into Portorosso, risking exposure and even death at the hands of locals who are more sea-fearing than seafaring.

Various farcical complications ensue, some of them cutely contrived but all of them deftly worked out, and enacted by a winning array of supporting players. These include a gruff but hospitable fisherman, Massimo (Marco Barricelli), and his plucky young daughter, Giulia (Emma Berman), who persuades Luca and Alberto to join her team in the local triathlon. That contest, whose events include swimming, biking and (of course) pasta eating, provides “Luca” with a conventionally sturdy narrative structure and an eminently hissable villain named Ercole (Saverio Raimondo).

Ercole’s last name is Visconti, one of countless movie allusions the filmmakers have tucked into the margins of the frame, most of which — the town’s sly nod to Hayao Miyazaki’s “Porco Rosso” aside — will prove catnip for lovers of Italian cinema in particular. There’s a boat named Gelsomina , a likeness of Marcello Mastroianni and a whole subplot devoted to fetishizing the Vespa, burnishing a vehicular-cinematic legacy that already includes “Roman Holiday” and “La Dolce Vita.” And those are just the explicit, deliberate references. When the trailer for “Luca” dropped months ago, more than a few wondered if Pixar had made a stealth PG-rated riff on “Call Me by Your Name,” Luca (!) Guadagnino’s drama about the pleasures of first love and the lush Italian countryside.

They have and they haven’t. Like most kid-centric studio animation, “Luca” has little time for romance and no room for sexuality. Luca and Alberto’s bond, though full of intense feeling and subject to darker undercurrents of jealousy and betrayal, is as platonic (if not quite as memorably cheeky) as the odd-couple pairings of Buzz and Woody, Marlin and Dory. And yet the specific implications of Luca and Alberto’s journey, which forces them to hide their true identities from a world that fears and condemns any kind of otherness, are as clear as water — too clear, really, even to be classified as subtext. “Luca” is about the thrill and the difficulty of living transparently — and the consolations that friendship, kindness and decency can provide against the forces of ignorance and violence.

Liberating oneself from those forces is a matter of individual and collective responsibility, and “Luca” is nuanced enough to understand that everyone shoulders that responsibility differently. Luca’s mom and dad, voiced by Rudolph and Gaffigan as lovably bumbling helicopter parents, must let go and loosen up, but their instinctive caution is hardly misplaced. Alberto’s stubborn devil-may-care attitude offers an admirable corrective, but that fearlessness is shown to mask a deeper sort of denial, an insularity that refuses to consider the full scope of the world’s possibilities. What makes Luca this story’s namesake hero is that he’s able to absorb the best of what his friends and family pour into him; though small and lean (and sometimes blue and green), he stands at the point where their best instincts and deepest desires converge.

By the same token, “Luca” the movie may look slight or modest compared with its more extravagant Pixar forebears; certainly it lacks the grand metaphysical ambitions of the Oscar-winning “Soul” (whose director, Pete Docter, is an executive producer here). But that may explain why it ultimately feels like the defter, more surefooted film, and one whose subtle depths and lingering emotions belie the diminished platform to which it’s essentially been relegated. “Luca” is big in all the ways that count; it’s the screens that got small.

Rated: PG, for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Playing: Starts June 18, El Capitan, Hollywood; also on Disney+

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Luca review: Pixar’s Riviera dream is a beautiful evocation of youthful possibility

The animation is a gorgeous, tender-hearted paean to childhood summers spent with sunburnt noses and callused fingers, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Enrico Casarosa. Starring: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Marco Barricelli, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, Jim Gaffigan. Cert PG, 96 mins

Pixar has, since its inception, always been embroiled in a game of one-upmanship with itself. No concept – not death, depression, nor our fundamental sense of purpose – can be too weighty to render in bright colours, moon-eyed cartoon characters, and whimsical microcosms trapped between the planes of reality and imagination. The studio’s latest, Luca , feels like an exception to those rules.

It never asks any tortuous questions of its audience. You don’t have to imagine what you’d tell a dead loved one if you had the chance to see them one last time (a la Onward ). You’re not made to think about what it’s like when you look around and realise you’ve outgrown the life you’ve built for yourself (looking at you, Toy Story 4 ). It is rigorously unphilosophical in a way that proves to be its greatest strength.

Luca is a gorgeous, tender-hearted paean to childhood summers spent with sunburnt noses and calloused fingers, and to the friendships that have helped us discover who we are. At its heart are two boys, Luca (Jacob Tremblay) and Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) – young sea monsters, to be precise – who live off the coast of the Italian Riviera at some point in the middle of the last century. Those on the land have hunted those in the sea for generations. It’s too dangerous to breach the surface, or so Luca’s parents (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) say.

Their son prides himself on being an obedient child, so he collects his dinglehoppers, mopes around with his flock of fishy pets, and dreams of being where the people are. Then, Alberto appears – the plucky one, who says “Silenzio, Bruno” to his all his fears. It’s one of the many cobbled-together Italian phrases that he repeats without much care for the meaning. Together, the boys explore all the small joys of human existence. Director Enrico Casarosa, whose previous work includes the Oscar-nominated short La Luna , drew heavily from his own youth spent in Genoa, where he became close friends with an Alberto, who was just as rebellious as his onscreen counterpart.

His film is refracted through those golden memories – of cobbled streets, green hills, chiselled cliffs, cold gelato, old Vespas, and plates full of trenette al pesto. Even the animation style feels more deliberately childlike than usual. The edges are softer, while the palette is vibrant and relatively simple. There’s even a tactile quality to it all that feels vaguely reminiscent of claymation, particularly Claude Barras’s 2016 film My Life as a Courgette , which similarly grounds its story in a child’s point of view.

Luca discovers that sea monsters can adopt human guises whenever they leave the water – in shimmering transformations that are technically complex to animate but look as natural and effortless as can be. It’s in the nearby town of Portorosso that they meet Giulia (Emma Berman, the newcomer in this universally bright and brilliant cast), who’s eager to curb the ego of local snob Ercole (Saverio Raimondo) by winning the town’s yearly triathlon. Ercole hasn’t taken kindly to Luca and Alberto, two outsiders he views only as “vagrants”.

The screenplay, by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, serves as a kind of all-purpose allegory, where audiences are free to narrow in on its queer subtext, its rebuke of xenophobia, or its triumph against any facet of small-mindedness. What’s important is the way the film gently unpacks how prejudice fortifies itself when it spreads unquestioned across generations. The pleasure of Luca lies less in its intellectual takeaways, than in the profound sensations that it stirs up. It’s a beautiful evocation of youthful possibility – of the sun beating down, the wind in your hair, and a road in front of you that feels as if it may never reach its end.

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Review: ‘Luca’ is Pixar, Italian style — and one of the studio’s loveliest movies in years

Defter and more surefooted than Pixar’s Oscar-winning ‘Soul,’ Enrico Casarosa’s directing debut streams on Disney+

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

The key theme of “Luca,” Pixar’s funny and enchanting new feature, is the acquisition of knowledge — and the realization of how liberating, if painful, that knowledge can be. The charming insight of this movie, directed by Enrico Casarosa from a script by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, is that nearly everyone has something to learn. Luca (Jacob Tremblay), a kid who finds himself in a strange new land, must master its mystifying rules and traditions to survive. He has an impetuous friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), whose know-it-all swagger is something of a put-on: Like Luca, he’s lonely and adrift in a world that turns out to be bigger, scarier and more wondrous than either of them could have imagined.

For their part, the animators at Pixar have imagined that world with customary ingenuity and bright-hued splendor, which makes it something of a shame that most audiences will have to watch the movie on Disney+. (It’s playing an exclusive June 18-24 engagement at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.) The filmmakers’ most exquisite visual creation here is Portorosso, a fictional village on the Italian Riviera presumably not far from Genoa, Casarosa’s birth city, which inspired his 2011 Pixar short, “La Luna.” In the director’s hands, Portorosso plays host to a parade of well-worn but lovingly deployed cultural clichés. The townsfolk navigate the sloped, cobblestoned streets on bicycles and Vespas and enjoy a diet of gelato, pasta and seafood. And speaking of seafood: The fishermen who trawl the surrounding waters always do so with harpoons at the ready, lest they encounter one of the fearsome sea monsters rumored to dwell just offshore.

The movie confirms and debunks those rumors in the opening minutes, plunging beneath the surface and into a neighborhood of underwater dwellers whose webbed and scaly humanoid bodies might well seem fearsome at first glance. But within seconds of meeting Luca — whose natural curiosity spurs varying degrees of protectiveness from his worried mom (Maya Rudolph), absent-minded dad (Jim Gaffigan) and slyly antiauthorian grandma (Sandy Martin) — it’s clear that there’s nothing remotely monstrous about him or the mildly cloying, sometimes hilarious family sitcom he initially seems to be inhabiting.

Fortunately, “Luca” enters brighter, bolder territory at precisely the moment Luca himself does. In a scene that brings to mind Pinocchio experiencing his first moments of sentience or Ariel testing out her new legs, Luca swims to the surface and discovers a world of wonderment, including the wonderment of his own body. Outside his aquatic habitat, his scales, fins and tail magically vanish and he takes on human form. Every sea creature like him possesses these adaptive powers of disguise, including his new buddy, Alberto, who’s been living above the surface for a while and gives Luca a crash course on ambulatory movement, direct sunlight and other dry-land phenomena.

That makes “Luca” a fish-out-of-water comedy in the most literal sense, governed in the classic Pixar tradition by whimsical yet rigorously observed ground rules. A splash of water will temporarily restore Luca and Alberto (or parts of them) to their underwater forms — a shapeshifting conceit that allows for a lot of deftly timed, seamlessly visualized slapstick mischief. Early on, at least, the two friends have little to fear as they run around a deserted isle, basking in the sunshine and dreaming of future adventures on the open road. Only when their curiosity gets the better of them do they muster the courage to sneak into Portorosso, risking exposure and even death at the hands of locals who are more sea-fearing than seafaring.

Various farcical complications ensue, some of them cutely contrived but all of them deftly worked out, and enacted by a winning array of supporting players. These include a gruff but hospitable fisherman, Massimo (Marco Barricelli), and his plucky young daughter, Giulia (Emma Berman), who persuades Luca and Alberto to join her team in the local triathlon. That contest, whose events include swimming, biking and (of course) pasta eating, provides “Luca” with a conventionally sturdy narrative structure and an eminently hissable villain named Ercole (Saverio Raimondo).

Ercole’s last name is Visconti, one of countless movie allusions the filmmakers have tucked into the margins of the frame, most of which — the town’s sly nod to Hayao Miyazaki’s “Porco Rosso” aside — will prove catnip for lovers of Italian cinema in particular. There’s a boat named Gelsomina , a likeness of Marcello Mastroianni and a whole subplot devoted to fetishizing the Vespa, burnishing a vehicular-cinematic legacy that already includes “Roman Holiday” and “La Dolce Vita.” And those are just the explicit, deliberate references. When the trailer for “Luca” dropped months ago, more than a few wondered if Pixar had made a stealth PG-rated riff on “Call Me by Your Name,” Luca (!) Guadagnino’s drama about the pleasures of first love and the lush Italian countryside.

They have and they haven’t. Like most kid-centric studio animation, “Luca” has little time for romance and no room for sexuality. Luca and Alberto’s bond, though full of intense feeling and subject to darker undercurrents of jealousy and betrayal, is as platonic (if not quite as memorably cheeky) as the odd-couple pairings of Buzz and Woody, Marlin and Dory. And yet the specific implications of Luca and Alberto’s journey, which forces them to hide their true identities from a world that fears and condemns any kind of otherness, are as clear as water — too clear, really, even to be classified as subtext. “Luca” is about the thrill and the difficulty of living transparently — and the consolations that friendship, kindness and decency can provide against the forces of ignorance and violence.

Liberating oneself from those forces is a matter of individual and collective responsibility, and “Luca” is nuanced enough to understand that everyone shoulders that responsibility differently. Luca’s mom and dad, voiced by Rudolph and Gaffigan as lovably bumbling helicopter parents, must let go and loosen up, but their instinctive caution is hardly misplaced. Alberto’s stubborn devil-may-care attitude offers an admirable corrective, but that fearlessness is shown to mask a deeper sort of denial, an insularity that refuses to consider the full scope of the world’s possibilities. What makes Luca this story’s namesake hero is that he’s able to absorb the best of what his friends and family pour into him; though small and lean (and sometimes blue and green), he stands at the point where their best instincts and deepest desires converge.

By the same token, “Luca” the movie may look slight or modest compared with its more extravagant Pixar forebears; certainly it lacks the grand metaphysical ambitions of the Oscar-winning “Soul” (whose director, Pete Docter, is an executive producer here). But that may explain why it ultimately feels like the defter, more surefooted film, and one whose subtle depths and lingering emotions belie the diminished platform to which it’s essentially been relegated. “Luca” is big in all the ways that count; it’s the screens that got small.

Rating: PG, for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence When: Available Friday Where: Disney+ Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

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Watch Luca with a subscription on Disney+, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

Slight but suffused with infectious joy, the beguiling Luca proves Pixar can play it safe while still charming audiences of all ages.

It isn't as creative as Pixar's best movies, but Luca lives up to the studio's standards for beautiful animation while telling a sweet fish-out-of-water story the whole family will enjoy.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Enrico Casarosa

Jacob Tremblay

Luca Paguro

Jack Dylan Grazer

Alberto Scorfano

Emma Berman

Maya Rudolph

Giacomo Gianniotti

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THE MOVIE CULTURE

Luca Movie Review & Summary: A Pleasant Little Tale Of Friendship

Luca is a coming of age Pixar Animated Movie. It revolves around a boy trying to explore the world with his friend Alberto by his side. 

Luca Movie Plot

Luca revolves around a sea creature who yearns to explore the world of land after having spent the better part of his childhood in sea. However the creatures on land aren’t particularly fond of these “Sea Monsters”. So when he wanders into this world, he is in for a world of adventure. 

Luca Movie Cast 

• Jacob Tremblay as Luca
• Jack Dylan Grazer as Alberto 
• Emma Berman as Giulia

Luca Movie Review

Luca is all kinds of fun, indeed. While I have been wanting them to really dig into the lore aspects of animation and churn something super original like Coco, Luca is still a worthy contender which tickles your emotions and makes you smile.

As I have said before, Animated movies have sort of fallen into the formulaic aspect of it all, and yes, Luca feels formulaic and the same old story progression or Disney and Pixar movies have been relying upon for all these years, but again, it works and majorly appeals to the audience that it targets (including me), so who am I to say anything. Luca is a world inhabited by Sea Monsters and Humans, so the dynamic of fear is mutual and each one of them is afraid that the other one’s going to hunt them.

Luca (Voiced by Jacob Tremblay) has spent his early childhood beneath the seas and like any other person who has never explored the world, he is curious, enthusiastic and yearning to go into the light of the sun and ride on a Vespa. This yearning for Vespa actually comes from one of the sea scavenger he meets while chasing a gramophone.

Alberto (Voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer) is an experienced land animal, by that I mean, he has no problem going in and out of water anytime he feels like, and he even has a house on a broken tower on the land. So this friendship nurtures as they wander on land in search of adventures and, more importantly, a shining Vespa. A Vespa which could transport them to any part of this world and let them explore each and every nook and corner, without anyone keeping them in a cage.

Luca Movie: Simple Yet Effective 

Luca has very booklike animation if that makes any sense, its somewhat detailed but in order to bring the magical beauty out of the seaside of Italian Riviera, it presents the waters and the sun in their most basic and pure forms. The scope for world-building isn’t the priority in this setting and it doesn’t need to go to extreme details in its animation like Coco needed.

With its simplistic story, it prioritizes a friendship and their relationship and the tropical waters of Italy look unbelievably pleasant. They basically transported me into a little vacation of my own, behind my Laptop. I know, that’s just sad. But yeah, the animation is subtle and without trying too many new things, concepts and themes, it elevates the beauty of the world. 

The friendship between Luca and Alberto is the main focus of the plot and it’s pretty amazing how both the voice actors do a tremendous job in bringing out the emotions. For Luca, he has always been scared. The whole plot has milestones which he needs to achieve, like getting out of the water, making friends, going into the feared “People Town”.

Alberto on the other hand, is a complete contrast of Luca. He never second guesses anything that he does, no matter how ridiculously wild or dangerous it is. He lets the nature judge the consequences for him. And this heartwarming blend of Caring too much and Not Caring at all, gives birth to this amazing friendship.

Both of them have their own sorrows and as we move ahead we discover certain depths of these protagonists, and they ultimately revolt that flame of an undying friendship. And yes, it makes one emotional to the core, because every good Animated movie has to make you cry now. It has become a rule for the studios, but one thing I can be sure about is that those tears are more often than not, always of Joy. 

The world, despite all of it’s beauty does fall a bit shallow perhaps. The characters are nice and the main antagonist, is nothing but a goofy bully who thinks everyone loves him. But leaving that aside, it becomes really Linear and straightforward, especially when the same concept and progression has been repeatedly used in so many movies now. After all these years and all this time of watching these movies, linear progressions are hardly surprising anymore. They don’t make you go, ‘Ha!’ in excitement and giddy optimism and that is also a testament of somewhat weak worldbuilding that movies like Pixar’s Luca, fall prey to.

The climax was a tear jerker but it also felt like the circumstances were forcing it to be one. There were some farewells which felt like they were there just to get the audience a bit more teary eyed. Luca could have had an ending where there aren’t any particular farewells and frankly, I would have been alright with that, but forcing a weird scenario just to separate people isn’t the best way to go about it in my opinion.

Maybe the writers could have crafted a better reason or maybe they should have just left. But coming back to what I said, it isn’t a good animated movie if it doesn’t make you cry. 

Luca is gorgeous and the relationship of Luca and Alberto triumphs in this ride. It does nothing new, but for both, the audience which is accustomed to Pixar Movies and the audience whose first animated movie is going to be Luca, there is a lot to like in it for everyone. It’s more than worth it to experience it for the light hearted, sweet natured flick it is, and even when my heart craves for something deeper, I had an absolute blast watching Luca. 

Luca Movie Critical Reception 

Luca stands at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes with the Consensus being, “Slight but suffused with infectious joy, the beguiling Luca proves Pixar can play it safe while still charming audiences of all ages.” It has a Metascore of 71.

The Movie Culture Synopsis

Luca is Pixar going light and hearty at the same time. It is sure to bring a smile on your face and you witness this heartwarming friendship unfold. It isn’t anything out of the ordinary though, for the better or the worse.

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Luca is an unusual entry in Pixar’s filmography. On its surface, it seems almost slight. It aims for a small canvas and appears to be a story about a couple of sea monsters masquerading as humans who hope to win a Vespa in a small post-war Italian town. But if you examine the film’s subtext, you can see that it’s arguably one of the animation studio’s most bold and daring movies as it embraces a story of first love between two adolescent boys. Of course, Pixar is owned by Disney, and Disney is the studio that wants to do victory laps when a supporting character dances with a man . Hollywood films need to open not only for American audiences who harbor their own prejudices, but also international audiences that can share those prejudices against the LGBTQ+ community. It’s easy to change your corporate Twitter avatar to a rainbow; it’s harder to tell a story that says love is love even if it’s between two people of the same gender. In 2021, Luca may be as far as a major studio is willing to venture, but it still manages to be a sweet, charming film about first love couched in an underdog/outsider narrative.

Luca ( Jacob Tremblay ) is a sea monster who spends his days herding fish, but he’s enchanted by the possibility of going up to the surface even though his parents Daniela ( Maya Rudolph ) and Lorenzo ( Jim Gaffigan ) have warned him about the brutal “land monsters” who inhabit it. But when Luca meets Alberto ( Jack Dylan Grazer ), a daring free-spirit who has no problem going up to the surface, Luca finds himself excited about the possibilities, especially when they start building their own Vespa. When Luca’s parents discover that he’s been making his way to the surface, they threaten to send him to The Deep with his weird uncle ( Sacha Baron Cohen ). Luca then flees with Alberto to the nearby village of Portorosso where they’re able to masquerade as humans as long as they don’t get wet. Whenever water touches their skin, they show their true form, but they feel that it’s worth the risk to get a Vespa. They find their chance when they come across Giulia ( Emma Berman ), a young girl who wants to win the annual Portorosso Cup. Teaming up with Giulia, the boys see a way to the prize money that will get them their Vespa, but the more time they spend in the human world, the more it starts to strain their relationship. Meanwhile, Daniela and Lorenzo also make their way to Portorosso to find Luca and spend their time dumping water on the local children so they can find their son.

RELATED: 'Luca' Director Enrico Casarosa and Producer Andrea Warren on Their Collaboration and How the Story Evolved

At first glance (and honestly, a glance that will preoccupy most of the kids who watch this movie), Luca is a simple story about two kids who are hiding the fact that their sea monsters, but they need to win the big race to get a motorscooter. You can easily enjoy Luca on this level because it’s like a lot of other Pixar movies: a buddy story set in a colorful environment that’s both charming and funny. The fact that there’s an entire subplot about two overprotective parents dousing children with water is the film’s comfort zone, and you can easily take in the breezy scenery and light narrative if you’d like. I’d go so far as to argue that the one element that works in favor of the film’s Disney+ release is that you can pause the film to go price trips of Italy and Vespas, which you’ll absolutely do as soon as humanly possibly.

Where Luca becomes something special is in the relationship between Luca and Alberto. On the one hand, you argue that their relationship is simply broad enough to encompass anyone who feels like an outsider. But I would counter that the film isn’t simply a story about “outsiders” but about people who must feel the need to pass as something they’re not because the world will perceive them as monsters. Even here, you could argue that perhaps this means religious minorities. But when the core of your movie is about the bond between Luca and Alberto, you have something different. At any point, Pixar could have made either Luca or Alberto the opposite gender of their co-star. They chose not to. They chose to make them two young boys who are hiding from the world but know the truth about each other. When they have an argument and Alberto shouts at Luca about Giulia, “What happens when she sees you? When anyone sees you?” this is a story about two people trying to figure out how they can be true to themselves in a world that rejects that truth. And you can hide it for a period, but at some point, to live your full life, you have to come out even if the world isn’t ready to handle it.

The emotional depth and richness between Luca and Alberto makes this different than just a typical Pixar buddy movie. This is not the same kind of relationship as Woody and Buzz in Toy Story or Mike and Sully in Monsters, Inc. or any of the other central relationships happening in Pixar’s movies. There’s a romantic connection here, but Pixar has constructed it in such a way as to try and get the benefit of the coding without ruffling any feathers that would want to shout that a homosexual relationship is not “family-friendly” (as if gay families don’t count for some reason other than bigotry). Presumably, there will be those who feel like Luca doesn’t go far enough, and I’d agree that one could always go further in making the point that love is love, and yet the film is making its own case about why people feel the need to hide.

Luca , in its own way, is the sea monster, dipping his toe in the water and seeing if anyone freaks outs because it now appears a bit scaly. There is a point where you could see Luca as broad enough to encompass anyone who has ever felt different, but that film would feel fairly unrewarding, and it would lack the specificity that Luca brings to the relationship between Luca and Alberto. The way these characters interact and the strength of their emotions towards each other is not just “two good buddies.” At its core, Luca is a love story, and that’s what makes it so lovely.

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‘Luca’ Review: A Friendly Pixar Trifle About a Sea Monster Out of Water

It's a gentle formula fairy tale infused with an honest nostalgia for '50s small-town Italy. But for Pixar that's pretty small gnocchi.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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With the exception of the tot-friendly, adult-numbing “The Good Dinosaur” (2015), “ Luca ” is as much of a trifle as the Pixar Animation Studios have ever come up with. That sounds like a harsh judgment, but in light of Pixar’s recent track record there are worse things you could say. My own feeling, while far from universal, is that in the last five years some of the most ambitious Pixar projects have gone off the track (like the Day of the Dead Mexican fantasia “Coco,” which was gorgeous but dragged on, or “Incredibles 2,” which despite knee-jerk raves was notably less incredible than the first one). “Luca,” set in Italy in the ’50s, is modest to a fault, and at times it feels generic enough to be an animated feature from almost any studio. But it’s a visually beguiling small-town nostalgia trip, as well as a perfectly pleasant fish-out-of-water fable — literally, since it’s about a boy sea monster who longs to go ashore.

The early parts are set under the sea, and if you’re thinking “The Little Mermaid” meets “Finding Nemo,” you wouldn’t be too far off. “Luca” is a film for kiddies that unabashedly recycles old formulas. Yet it’s built around one original minor trope of fairy-tale nonsense: In this movie, when a sea monster like Luca (Jacob Tremblay), with his electric-blue fauna hair and aqua skin and Creature from the Black Lagoon gill ears, leaves the water, he instantly converts to human form; when he goes back into the water, he reverts. If this back-and-forth metamorphosis feels overly convenient (and not quite explained), the movie still has fun with it, especially when the conceit turns into a constant threat of blowing the sea monsters’ cover.

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Luca is desperate to go ashore, despite the dire warnings of his parents, the brassy Daniela (Maya Rudolph) and lumpish Lorenzo (Jim Gaffigan). Crawling up on a rocky beach, he becomes a curly-haired, big-eyed kid who looks Italian but still sounds, in the performance of Jacob Tremblay (from “Wonder”), like a wide-eyed American everykid. He meets the teenage Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), who’s like the sea-monster version of a Jonas brother, and who’s been on land for a while, living in an abandoned stone castle column as a real boy. Alberto is alone except for all the junk he collects, but with his reckless high spirits he’s got a dream: He’ll do anything to own a Vespa! That’s right, the fabled Italian motor scooter that was introduced in 1946.

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“Luca” is a bit colorless until the two boys arrive in the sloping fishing village of Portorosso, with its crooked pastel buildings and winding streets, its sun-dappled town square dotted with a trattoria and a pescheria, its poster of “La Strada.” So quaint! So picturesque! So Fellini meets De Sica meets your trusty postwar travel agent! Once there, they discover there’s going to be a local competition, the annual Portorosso Cup triathlon (swimming, pasta eating, bike riding), the winner of which will receive a prize of enough money to buy a Vespa. Luca and Alberto team up with the feisty, flame-haired Giuilia (Emma Berman), who can get them into the race, and they spend some time at her house, quaking under the mostly wordless gaze of her hulking, brooding, one-armed knife-happy fisherman father, Massimo (Marco Barricelli), who lives in mortal fear of sea monsters and makes the tastiest looking pesto pasta, which our two heroes literally stuff their faces with, since they have no idea how to use a fork.

Every so often, an overhead leak or a thrown glass of water will land on their skin and reveal their psychedelically hued sea-monster selves. But only for a few seconds; they snap right back. And that pasta scene aside, they don’t seem to have much trouble adjusting to acting like humans. “Luca” is the first feature directed by Enrico Casarosa, who made the celebrated 2011 Pixar short “La Luna,” and while his images have a perky bravura (especially in a fantasy sequence spun out of the glories of the Vespa), the script, by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones, is pretty thin stuff.

The two boys help Massimo with his fishing, because they know just where the fish are. Luca learns that what he thought were “fish” in the night sky are actually stars. And Luca’s parents, distressed at his disappearance, show up in Portorosso in their own human guise, dropping water balloons on kids to see if one of them will turn back into their son. The rascally Vespa owner Urkule stands around the town square taunting and kvetching. Someone at the studio needed to send a memo saying that this isn’t quite a plot ­— it’s a bunch of incidents killing time.

At last, the film arrives at the Portorosso Cup and has some fun with it, as Luca attempts to do the swimming portion of the triathlon in an ancient diver’s suit, only to learn, by the time they’re on bikes, that it has begun to rain, which will turn these sea monsters right back to their natural selves. Will the town accept them? “Luca” resolves that question in as winsomely simple a fashion as it does everything else. It’s a friendly bauble of a film, but it can’t help but make you wonder if Pixar is losing its golden touch.

Reviewed online, June 12, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 100 MIN.

• Production: (Animated) A Walt Disney Studios release of a Pixar Animation Studios production. Producer: Andrea Warren. Executive producers: Pete Docter, Peter Sohn, Kiri Hart.
• Crew: Director: Enrico Casarosa. Screenplay: Jesse Andrews, Mike Jones. Camera: David Juan Bianchi, Kim White. Editors: Catherine Apple, Jason Hudak. Music: Dan Romer.
• With: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Maya Rudolph, Giacomo Gianniotti, Jim Gaffigan, Sandy Martin, Francesca Fanti, Gino D’Acampo.

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Everybody loves  Luca - and here's why. When  Pixar announced a multi-year drive toward original stories in 2019, they would've expected to draw fresh audiences into movie theaters and potentially generate new franchises to replace classics such as  Toy Story and  Cars . Unfortunately, COVID-19 has scuppered those plans. Onward was affected by theater closures, while  Soul released exclusively on the Disney+ streaming service. Luca has befallen the same fate, its planned June 18, 2021 theatrical release replaced by a streaming roll-out, only showing in theaters where Disney+ isn't available.

Directed by Enrico Casarosa,  Luca stars Jacob Tremblay as Luca Paguro and Jack Dylan Grazer as Alberto Scorfano - two sea monsters who adopt a human form whenever on dry land. Despite visiting the surface world being strictly forbidden (where have we heard that one before?), Luca and Alberto go exploring on the Italian Riviera, leading to a magical clash of cultures and a typically emotive coming-of-age story drenched in Pixar's trademark top-notch animation.

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After  Onward 's mixed reception , Pixar bounced back strongly with  Soul , which attracted widespread acclaim even without a theatrical release. The studio will naturally be looking to continue that momentum with  Luca , and early signs suggest they've done just that, with reviews for Pixar's latest offering skewing toward the positive. Currently sitting pretty with 91% on Rotten Tomatoes (at the time of writing), here's a sample of what the critics are saying about  Luca .

Screen Rant :

While there are certain aspects of the film’s story that could have been expanded upon and a somewhat frustrating antagonist in Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo), who is much older than the core trio to be as petty as he is about a competition,  Luca  is a wonderful coming of age story with a nice message that balances deep emotions and a lot of adventurous fun.

Independent :

The pleasure of  Luca  lies less in its intellectual takeaways, than in the profound sensations that it stirs up. It’s a beautiful evocation of youthful possibility – of the sun beating down, the wind in your hair, and a road in front of you that feels as if it may never reach its end.

It’s particularly impressive that “Luca” operates so well on multiple levels. For children, this is a story about friendship and being true to yourself and coping with parents who are afraid to send you out into the world. For adults, it’s all that and much more; for LGBTQ+ audiences, in particular, the film offers a powerful metaphor about the closet.

Its Mediterranean flavor and disarming lessons about the value of friendship and acceptance provide fresh charms, while the breathtaking beauty of the film’s environments both underwater and above the surface brings additional rewards. It’s not canonical Pixar, but it’s as sweet and satisfying as artisanal gelato on a summer afternoon.

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Evidently, Pixar's summer reverie holds plenty to enjoy. There's widespread agreement that  Luca  successfully evokes the breezy memories of a childhood vacation, setting the perfect tone and doing justice to a beautiful setting with typically impressive visuals. Many write-ups also hail how  Luca pitches its more complex themes, finding ways to incorporate layers of subtext without coming across as obvious or forced in its moral leanings. Admittedly, few are putting  Luca  up there with Pixar 's biggest hitters in terms of quality, but there's a general consensus among critics that this coastal breeze of a movie is a welcome addition to the Pixar catalog, with most ratings landing between 3 and 4 stars. With that said, some have been less kind to  Luca :

A strange hybrid of Italian neorealism and fish-based fantasy, Luca is beautiful to behold but plays it too safe to make a real impact. Still, great CG linguine.

It’s string-pulling Pixar formula but done with just about enough effectiveness to work... It doesn’t have that emotional kicker of an ending we might expect and hope for, it’s far too slight to evoke an ugly cry, but it’s breezily watchable, low stakes stuff, handsomely animated (on dry land, in water less so).

RogerEbert :

“Luca” retreads too much well-cultivated ground and reworks so many achingly familiar tropes as its best qualities sink to a murky bottom. While some material may hit with younger audiences, “Luca” makes for Pixar’s least enchanting, least special film yet.

To summarize the recurring criticisms,  Luca seems to cater less for grown-ups than most of Pixar's output, and there's an overall sense (even in some of the positive reviews) that while enjoyable in the moment, Luca's tale lacks the lasting impact of  Toy Story ,  The Incredibles or  Inside Out . Reading between the lines,  Luca 's less positive reviews seem to suggest Pixar's usual formula is in need of a shake-up, with  Luca occupying distinctly familiar territory. Nevertheless, the sea monster's share of  Luca reactions have been full of praise, and Pixar looks to have another hit on its hands - especially with kids wanting something fun to watch during the warm months.

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Key Release Dates

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• Luca (2021)

Review: ‘Luca’

Pixar’s latest animated feature follows the titular Luca (Jacob Tremblay) and his friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), who are sea monsters that turn into humans when they land on the surface. Luca spends his days herding goatfish that are populating his seabed village. His parents (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) forbid him to go to the surface because they believe it is dangerous for sea monsters to meddle with humans. After disobeying their wishes, Luca meets Alberto and is introduced to human objects and the unknown world of the surface dwellers. The pair dream of buying a Vespa and exploring the world, whether by land or by sea. When Luca’s parents discover that he’s been to the surface, they try to send him to the deep seas with his uncle (Sacha Baron Cohen). Luca and Alberto escape to the island of Portorosso and meet a young girl named Guilia (Emma Berman) who wants to win the Portorosso Cup Triathlon, so the duo joins her in hopes of using the prize money to buy their dream Vespa.

Enrico Casarosa’s directorial debut Luca is a story about friendship, acceptance, chasing big dreams, overcoming fears, and disobeying a parent’s orders — all the elements that are familiar in a Pixar movie. The best part of this animated feature is Luca and Alberto’s friendship. Their shared dreams are charming and adventurous. Their chemistry is well balanced, as Alberto lives on his own in his hideout and dares to look at the world differently, while Luca is timid and scared. However, when Luca meets Alberto, he overcomes his fear of trying out new things in the surface world. He learns how to build a Vespa from scrap materials, drives off a ledge despite his fears of hurting himself, and learns how to ride a bike on a steep lane. The biggest fear he overcomes is learning how to be accepted in the town of Portorosso. 

Luca and Alberto’s charming friendship blossoms as they end up depending on each other to finish the race. For Alberto, it’s letting go of the fear that people would disappear without telling him. For Luca, it’s finally admitting to himself that he can accomplish great things when he believes in himself. Their connection is the emotional drive of the movie, and even when their friendship is on the rocks, everything falls back together. However, while the movie focuses on the duo’s friendship, Guilia and her journey are sidelined. Guilia’s goal is to win the race and defeat the local bully. Her friendship with them is not important in the third act. She mostly acts as the motivator for Luca and Alberto to win the race together. Despite this budding friendship, it’s predictable and recyclable. 

The script, written by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones,  encapsulates the emotional energy of Luca, Alberto, and Guilia. The sentiments of friendship, betrayal, and forgiveness are beautifully written, especially in regards to Alberto’s emotional journey. Alberto hides his emotions behind his energetic persona, but deep down his fear of abandonment is captured with a sense of delicacy that grips the viewers’ hearts. Guilia’s words of encouragement and her determination to bring out the best in Luca and Alberto is charming. She’s loud and snappy at times, but it’s only because she cares about them. When Guilia finds out that Luca is a sea monster, she tells him to leave, fearing that he might be in danger too. There is a sense of kindness and understanding within Guilia’s personal conflict, especially in a town that hunts sea monsters like Luca and Alberto. 

Luca is set on the beautiful coast of the Italian Riviera and the movie captures the landscapes and backdrops splendidly. The character designs are unique, incorporating a cartoon-ish look which is completely different compared to the other animated features by Pixar. The landscapes of the small town swim with gorgeous blues and greens, and the colors just fly off the screen. The viewer completely immerses themselves in the visual splendor and it is impossible to look away for a moment, in case any of it is missed. 

Luca echoes a lot of the same tropes from Pixar’s other animated features. Last year’s Onward was about two elven brothers who go on an adventure to resurrect their dead father. This fantasy quest deals with a parent who’s running after them to make sure that they are safe. In Finding Nemo , when Nemo is captured by divers, Marlin teams up with Dory to swim through the vast ocean to find his son. In the case of Inside Out , Joy and Sadness set out to find Riley’s core memories which are lost in the long-lost memory area. All of these Pixar characters deal with identical themes of overcoming fears, parental difficulty, or running away to complete their desired goal. In Luca, when the titular character’s parents learn of his disappearance, they go to Portorosso and assume their human forms to find their son. The parents in each of these movies have a sense of protection and responsibility to keep them safe as they believe that their children are not meant to explore the dangerous world on their own. 

Luca seems like a missed opportunity to bring a new ‘spark’ to the already iconic catalog of Pixar animation. It radiates the fun and childlike energy that is expected of any Pixar movie, as well as the studio’s fantastic visual splendor. However, Luca is not special. It does not offer anything different or new to the mix. The themes of parental difficulty, letting go, and overcoming fear are all running themes that were repeated in last year’s Onward . The movie does not reach its full potential regardless of how much Luca and Alberto wish to dream big with their bright eyes. These familiar themes have been seen before in movies such as Finding Nemo , Toy Story , and Coco . Even with Luca ’s dynamic premise and grand visual splendor, it is not special. Perhaps Pixar’s magic is dimming slowly.

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90 Luca (2021)

Socioeconomic class discrimination in luca.

By Krystal Ibarra

As a kid that was born in the early 90’s I have a soft spot for Pixar, and once I heard that there was some influence from studio Ghibli I was sold. While  Luca ended up being very lighthearted, it does a great job at normalizing that everyone is different and that you shouldn’t hide who you are just because a few people will have a problem with it. Ultimately the most important people will be the ones to accept you for you. The focus of this essay is discrimination due to economic status. This is something that is seen throughout this movie, and as we move along, I will be pointing out scenes that I think point to the discrimination of Luca, Giulia, Alberto, and even Massimo. This is a topic of discrimination that I feel can be overshadowed by some of the more blatant forms of discrimination, but unfortunately affects millions.

Let’s go ahead and start with Giulia. She was the only female character in the movie that was close to the same age as Luca and Alberto, there were other female characters, but they were Luca’s Mother and Grandmother. In this town, Giulia sticks out like a sore thumb because of her red hair and her family’s economic status. Giulia is also the only human child in the film who is seen working. When she is first introduced, she is seen on her bike pulling a cart behind her, dropping off orders. This contrasts with the rest of the kids who are playing soccer in the town square. On several occasions, she is seen either making deliveries or leaving to go make her round of deliveries. It’s also stated in the film that her parents are no longer together and that Giulia lives with her mother in another city during the school year. This I’m sure leads to other financial struggles for her father since he is the person bringing in the catch to sell to his customers. Before being introduced to Massimo there is a shot that shows their home, and the bottom of the two-story home looks to be a fish shop. I would assume that Giulia’s mother would have run the shop when her parents were together.

I noticed that There was an economic difference between Massimo and the other fishermen within the village. Massimo owned a smaller boat compared to the other fishermen seen throughout the film. In fact, in the film it was comical how small the boat was for how big Massimo is.

Adding to evidence of Massimo’s economic status within the community, Massimo’s home is older and more warn down than what you are first introduced to when first seeing the town. The paint both on the outside and the inside was chipped, their electricity ran along the outside of the wall suggesting that the house was built prior to electricity being common in homes. This also points to that there haven’t been any major improvements to the house, likely because it is not something Massimo can afford.

All the furniture was mismatched in the kitchen or made from old crates, again pointing towards the fact that they are a low-income family. This difference is also seen with Luca and Alberto, since they literally walked out from the bottom of the sea, and consequently don’t have anything except for the clothes on their backs. Throughout all the movie they are seen without shoes and other characters even comment saying that they got their clothes off a dead body and begin taunting Luca saying that he smells.

When being first introduced to the antagonist, there is a shot where the camera angle is slightly pointed up towards the antagonist’s face. This provides the viewer with Luca’s Point of view and highlights Luca’s feelings of intimidation and the antagonist’s perceived position of superiority due to his financial status and age. On page 551 of Psychology 12th edition written by David Myers and C. Dewall, they define social cognitive perspective as “behavior as influenced by the interaction between peoples traits (including their thinking) and social context.”. Throughout this movie we see the antagonist behaving in a way that places him in a position of superiority purely by throwing his weight and social influence around. His behavior is fed by his own stereotypes against low-income families and thus sees it acceptable to bully Luca Alberto and Giulia.

Something important to point out is that there is prejudice when it comes to people of lower class or economic standing, there are stereotypes that label them as untrustworthy, lazy, and even dangerous. This thought is fed by the just-world phenomenon, that of low economic status are uneducated, lazy, and are more likely to be substance abusers, and thus get what they deserve. I find it interesting that the obvious person with money in this film is the one who ends up being untrustworthy, lazy, violent, and maniacal. I think this is a good way of Pixar pointing out that your economic status/social class does not equate to a person’s worth in society. This is shining a spotlight onto the discrimination against poor people/communities, albeit a small spotlight, but a spotlight nonetheless.

Crashcourse. “Prejudice and Discrimination: Crash Course Psychology #39.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Nov. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0iP2Zm6a4.

“JUST THE FACTS: Poverty Myths & Stereotypes.” Just Harvest Action Against Hunger, Just Harvest, Jan. 2015, www.justharvest.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Just-Harvest-Poverty-Myths-Stereotypes-fact-sheet.pdf.

Myers , David G, and C. Nathan DeWall. Psychology. 12th edition ed., Worth Publishers Macmillan Earning, 2018.

Scott, A. O. “’Luca’ Review: Calamari by Your Name.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 June 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/movies/luca-review.html.

“Social Class Prejudice. Prejudice in the Modern World Reference Library.” Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia.com, 16 Aug. 2021, www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/social-class-prejudice.

Difference, Power, and Discrimination in Film and Media: Student Essays Copyright © by Students at Linn-Benton Community College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Luca (2021)

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