Onward

I didn’t expect to watch this, even though I love many of Pixar’s movies.

But COVID-19 forced Disney to release “Onward” on Disney+, and since I’ve got Disney+, and since the world is closed. Why not give it a try?

Leave it to Pixar to take a bizarre story about two elf brothers on a quest to see their dead father one last time and make it a borderline tearjerker. Tom Holland and Chris Pratt do great voice work, with Pratt in particular summoning all the goofy joy of Andy Dwyer.

And somehow, though a feat of animation I cannot understand, the film extracts meaning and empathy and genuine connection from a set of legs (the father’s return from the beyond goes awry). I can only imagine the amount of effort the Pixar crew expended to keep the legs from tipping into macabre.