Critics reviews

While "Luca" might lack some of the dizzying inventiveness that marks out top-tier Pixar, it’s packed to the gills with charm.

In all kinds of ways, "Luca" is the smallest film that Pixar has made, but it’s also unquestionably one of the studio’s loveliest.

A Mondo Italiano Little Mermaid that embraces its 20th century Mediterranean archetypes with a that’s-ah-spicy-meat-ah-ball fervor, it does not have the oversized imagination of an Inside Out, the end-of-innocence heft of the Toy Story films, or the pathos and wit of a Finding Nemo. It’s a much more modest affair, a tale of friendship that’s a very personal project for filmmaker Enrico Casarosa, yet one that’s capable of resembling a summer afternoon lounging by the shoreline.

The story's bright swirl of Pixar pixie dust, jangle soundtrack, and gentle lessons on accepting otherness and learning to move past fear feel like a temporary passport: a sweetly soulful all-ages dip in la dolce vita.

“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.

There is just enough atmospheric detail and, in the final lap, enough genuine feeling in the thorny friendships to make it worth seeing.

It is hard to deny that "Luca" will fill a gap for less-demanding younger viewers. It’s well-meaning. It’s lively. It’s moderately funny. But it is no "Finding Nemo."

"Luca" is so intent on meaning something that it only ever halfway inhabits the delightfully colorful world it lays out... The light glimmers off the surface of the ocean without any worry of going too deep.

Unlike some other recent Pixar features, this one aims to be charming rather than mind-blowing... So not a masterpiece, in other words. But also not a pandering, obnoxious bit of throwaway family entertainment.

It's the sort of generic concept that's pleasant enough but falls short of the high standards Pixar has set, and after the disappointing "Onward," recently achieved again with "Soul," which exemplified the ambition that "Luca" (the movie, not the character) conspicuously lacks.

["Luca"] may look slight or modest compared with its more extravagant Pixar forebears... 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.

The film is lovely and funny, but it operates on a more minor key than some of Pixar’s true classics... [It] will perhaps be more memorable for what it might have been than for what it actually is.