By Matthew Moorcroft

Solid Recommendation

• Directed by Ugo Bienvenu
• Starring Romy Fay, Juliano Krue Valdi, Mark Ruffalo, Natalie Portman
• PG

As animated films go, Arco is as animated as they come. Quite literally, in fact, as the rainbow colors that adorn it’s title character leap off the screen and feel simply just made for the animated medium. You simply just can’t tell a story like this in live action, and Ugo Bienvenu understands this wholeheartedly, taking advantage of the lack of limitations to go hog wild here in terms of vision and ideas.

With characters almost as colorful as that aesthetic, Arco is pretty delightful when it wants to be. It’s got an achingly innocent quality to it that makes it easy to digest for younger audiences, nostalgic for older audiences, and maybe a little bit too tame for it’s own good at points. That innocence is mostly reflected in the lead character, who just wants to fly and time travel like the rest of his family but is too young to do so. Taking his chance one night, Arco takes his sister’s outfit and travels back in time, though ends up tumbling into the woods and losing his ability to return.

That year he returns to is still in the future, albeit not as far ahead as his fantastical, almost utopian future that has survived climate change and other significant events in human history. Where he lands instead is 2075, which is the thralls of the worst of said climate change, automation is king, and AI is both a positive and a negative on society at large. Arco doesn’t really try to make sweeping statements but it’s that prescience that gives Arco it’s small amount of bite in the midst of the childlike naiveté that surrounds the rest of the film.

Once Iris, the young girl who finds him, enters the picture, it becomes a race against time to bring him back home, even if Arco and Iris kind of don’t want to separate. Their chemistry is sweet, cute, and sugary sweet – the kind of first love you only really get with characters at the cusp of teenagedom. Both Iris and Arco are given plenty of great personality from the animators who are clearly having a fun time working on this, and the world they inhabit is vibrant and unique. Even the robots feel like they come from a picture book, being more like friendly caretakers then anything else. This especially goes for Mikki, the household robot that takes care of Iris and her younger baby brother Peter, who is in a lot of ways the beating heart of the film and more of a parent to Iris then her actual parents. Oh, and there are also conspiracy theorists on their trail. Does that cover everything?

If Arco sounds a little too complicated sometimes for that innocent tone, then you would be right. If Arco has any flaw stopping it from being an all time classic is that it’s a bit on the undercooked side narratively, bouncing together a lot of different ideas that don’t really mesh well together sometimes even if all of them individually are interesting. It’s less of a fault of the film and likely the result of Bienvenu’s imagination running wild; there is the sense he’s unsure if he is ever going to make a film like this again so he’s going “beast mode” so to speak.

It’s really in it’s last act that Arco begins to step up as it makes some bold narrative choices regarding it’s emotional thesis that ultimately seal the deal in really making the journey worth it. There are some tough lessons here for kids to have to learn, but I suspect it will resonate highly with younger audiences who will likely remember the film fondly the older they get. A particular sequence involving Arco, Iris, and Mikki stuck in a cave is as strong as they get, ending in an emotional whallop that earns it’s flowers and sets up the next big emotional wind up in unexpected ways.

I don’t know if Arco will stand as one of the best films in this recent resurgence of indie animation – it’s got stiff competition – but as a debut, it’s got a unique vision and I suspect Bienvenu has a bright future ahead of him as an animation darling. Arco certainly remains a visual feast regardless, and seeing it on the big screen was a sight for the eyes and ears (Arnaud Toulon’s score is excellent) so in the end, it was likely worth it. Like all good family films as well, it has something important to say and says it with it’s chest loudly and proudly, and that’s something we can all admire.