I knew from the very onset that Onward was going to work my tear ducts like a German milkmaid squeezing at a bovine’s teat. It didn’t matter that the blue teenage elves looked more like the brainchildren of Dreamworks than Pixar, or that some of the comedy was a bit low-brow and slapstick, or even that Onward settles more in the mid-to-lower tier ranking of the once-unflappable animation studio’s filmography, this movie was always gonna turn me into a mushy adult sniveling away in a dark theater. And that it did. 

Pixar has the formula down pat: lay the emotional groundwork of a fractured family early on, send hero(es) on a journey, twist the family dynamic knife in act three until audiences all get a little misty-eyed. In Onward, the Lightfoot patriarch is out of the picture, having died some 16 years ago, something his sons Ian (Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt) struggle with to this day. With the dead dad card laid out right from the jump, you know that this one is gonna be a tearjerker. And jerk tears it does.

Ian is a bit of a loner, timid and afraid, entering junior high without anything resembling a tight-knit inner circle while Barley is a well-meaning miscreant, a nerdy D&D activist-type who has had a good many run-ins with the law, mostly because his stepdad is a cop. They’re both also elves.

Though they live in a mystical land, modernization has meant the end of magic. Flipping a switch is easier than casting a spell and so the Lightfoot’s land of unicorns and phoenix gems is still populated with smartphones and 747s. It’s an imaginative setting for a Pixar movie – a magical land that’s lost touch with magic – but the script from Dan Scanlon, Jason Headley and Keith Bunin doesn’t fully take advantage of the opportunity that such a backdrop affords. 

[READ MORE: Our glowing review of Pixar’s Academy Award-winning third sequel ‘Toy Story 4‘ featuring the vocal talent of Tom Hanks]

More often than not, Onset settles with just mashing modern civilization on top of its fantasy setting without necessarily teasing out how the two might clash. There are clever visual nods to the juxtaposition of fantasy and real-world spliced in, rabid unicorns pilfering from trash cans for instance, but it does feel like the studio’s usual brilliance is a bit dulled this time round. This remains the biggest problem with Onward, it’s just not up to the same level of cleverness that the greatest Pixar movies are. Fortunately for Pixar (and viewers), even their lesser efforts are usually worthy of much praise and Onward’s well-drawn characters and sturdy emotional core prove enough to keep it afloat and always pushing onward. 

When Ian and Barley receive instructions on how to bring their dead dad back to life for a single day, the two brothers embark on a quest to find a doodad (do dad, gettit?) that’ll make up for all the time lost between father and sons. But first, they have to set off on a cross-Elven-country road trip, find a rare MacGuffin called a Phoenix stone, escape the grasp of their badged Centaur stepdad, all without setting off an ancient curse.

The cast is made up of a solid collection of recognization voices including Holland, Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Lena Waithe and Ali Wong who all do serviceable work, even if it, once again, isn’t up to the top-tier vocal performances in some of Pixar’s greater efforts. The problem is that once you’ve set the bar so high, delivering a middle-of-the-road, solid for all intents and purposes, movie just feels a bit like a bunt and though Onward is by most accounts a well-constructed, thoughtfully-told saga of an enchanted road trip and family bonding, it pales in comparison to the great instances of movie magic that Pixar has conjured before. 

CONCLUSION: All in all, ‘Onward’ casts a spell but it’s a relatively mild one, one that’s mainly aimed at the viewer’s emotional side and can only take partial advantage of its magical setting. 

B

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