Disney+ has an animated film coming up that’s looking to be the film of the summer. The lush Luca is a coming-of-age fantasy film featuring the voices of Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Marco Barricelli, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan.
Per the film’s official synopsis: Set in a beautiful seaside town on the Italian Riviera, Disney and Pixar’s original feature film Luca is a coming-of-age story about one young boy experiencing an unforgettable summer filled with gelato, pasta and endless scooter rides. Luca shares these adventures with his newfound best friend, but all the fun is threatened by a deeply-held secret: they are sea monsters from another world just below the water’s surface.
A new trailer for the film dropped this week and Shadow and Act was on hand a few weeks ago for a presentation on the film and press conference featuring director Enrico Casarosa and producer Andrea Warren.
For prospective viewers, one thing that is already noticeable about the film is its bright seaside setting with a Pixar flair on it. The film covers new ground in the way that water is presented in animated films.
“We looked at the water. And the other side of it is emotion,” Casarosa explained. “We always think about emotion. And so, when I think about water and effects…’How does this support an emotional moment?’ So, we have wonderful, wonderful stuff that you haven’t seen yet, but, in moments of the movie where the emotion comes out, where the water supports it. Where the waves support it. Where the weather supports it. We have more control, and we were able to really try something a little bit different, that looks a little different. To feel the most emotion and have it a little less realistic and more stylized.”
Luca is also coming out at a time where the world is seemingly and hopefully emerging out of a global pandemic. For Warren, the film may be inspirational for many.
“Even just the setting, we’re hoping, is wonderful,” said the producer. “That beautiful sense of getting to go somewhere that we all have been missing so much. We hope that it feels like being transported to this beautiful place that you would love to visit for real, but that you can visit through Luca. So, I think that’s one piece of it that we’re hoping just to transport people out of our homes to feel like we went somewhere.”
“I think an interesting aspect that will be for all of us as we come out of this pandemic has stripped away so much of our lives, you know,” she continued. “And I think that the question as we rebuild them, when we can, is what do we want to keep and what do we want to leave behind? And I feel like Luca, as a film, celebrates so many of those beautiful, meaningful things in our lives, that we all want back, which is connection, family, friends, eating together. I think those are the beautiful things that we miss, and that are really a part of what this film is about. So, I hope it will help us all as we decide what pieces we want. It celebrates all of that.”
Luca begins streaming on Disney+ on June 18.
