#4 Onward

January 4, 2021
Onward (2020) ****
Disney+
Free
Movies from 2020

So, yesterday I still was not in the mood for Iron Man 2, which I will get to this week, or I won’t actually be able to ever watch Captain America, and nobody wants that.

Anyway, I spun the wheel and came up with a new category I just added, Movies from 2020, as I only watched four movies last year, so I have some catching up to do! Onward was the movie that came up (not Outward, which I constantly keep calling it for some reason), and it’s one that I really wanted to see in the theater in the before times, but I didn’t get around to it before lock down.

I was warned that it was sad and would make me cry, and it sure was, but I don’t think there are many Pixar movies that haven’t made me cry, this one no more so than any other.

It’s a charming, lovable movie with great characters and a great plot and I loved everything about it. But what I love most about it is that it really avoids so many high school movie tropes.

Ian, the main character, is filled with anxiety and afraid of everything, but not because he is treated badly. The kids at school he is afraid to invite to his party are not bullies and don’t laugh at him when he gets ink all over his face, his big, enthusiastic brother doesn’t torture him, his mother’s cop boyfriend isn’t mean, and his mother loves and wants to protect him, but isn’t suffocating him.

There are familiar things in the story, but there are so many well trodden story paths that they avoid. I loved the relationship between the brothers, I loved how the big jockish one was the nerd instead of the spindly one, I loved how they mixed the magical world with the modern world, I just loved Onward.

I realize that, through a completely random set of circumstances, I have watched animated movies in three of the first four days, and the fourth movie, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, contains animated sequences. Time to shake things up!