Onward (2020)

(Disney Streaming, February 2021) After nearly a decade in the trenches of one sequel after another, Pixar’s current slate of films seems to be on an upswing. Now that the latest Toy Story is out of the door, the next few films are a return to original concepts, and with the Soul/Onward combo for 2020, it looks as if the studio is once again free of its corporate obligations. Now, Onward is not the strongest of the two: Rather than deal with grand concepts of life and personalities as Soul did, this film is a suburban fantasy (or rather: a suburban story set in a modernized fantasy world) featuring two brothers coming to grips with their long-departed father. Thanks to a bit of magic, the metaphorical becomes literal, as the two teenagers go on a quest to restore the body of their father for a single day. This being a world in which magic had been displaced by technology, our elf-heroes drive a minivan painted with a unicorn and defy bike-riding fairies on their quest to retrieve a magical gem. There’s a manticore involved. As usual for Pixar, the visual polish of the result is up to the very detailed invention of its world: nearly every frame crams a joke or an interesting detail, made even more credible with Pixar’s style of combining a hyperreal setting with stylized characters. The emotional core of the film is strong, helping it breeze past the finishing line without too much trouble. By itself, Onward is decent enough, although it doesn’t quite match the brilliance of other Pixar films. Still, that’s an honourable result: Even a middle-of-the-pack Pixar outclasses other films, and it’s good to see them go back to original stories rather than churn out another line of toys for their Disney overlords.