The movie’s smattering of Italian language also provides welcome cultural exposure for young audiences. And Luca’s display of loyalty and courage fills his parents with a pride they perhaps have never before shown. The story’s outcome - when the boys’ inevitable exposure as feared and reviled sea monsters makes them vulnerable to Ercole’s harpoon - serves as a gratifying teaching moment for kids about being open to otherness rather than rejecting it based on old prejudices and superstitions. Luca’s quaint sea-creature interpretation of the night sky prompts Giulia to introduce him to a telescope and her school textbook on the universe, which feeds his hunger for knowledge. This turns out to be emotionally uplifting for Alberto especially, who hides the hurt of abandonment beneath his chipper bravado. While Luca’s worried parents venture onto land to track down their runaway son, Giulia’s burly fisherman dad (Marco Barricelli) more or less adopts them after they prove unexpectedly savvy in finding the best spot to fish. The script by Jesse Andrews ( Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and Mike Jones ( Soul), like all the best Pixar movies, laces touching life lessons and delicate helpings of sentiment into what’s essentially a caper. He’s also relentless in his mockery of Giulia (Emma Berman), a tomboy fisherman’s daughter who has continually failed in her attempts to beat Ercole and end his “reign of terror.” But when Luca and Alberto join her to form an underdog team, Giulia approaches the competition with new spirit. Ercole never tires of boasting of his repeat wins of the Portorosso Cup, an annual triathlon event comprising swimming, pasta consumption and a final bicycle leg. They have a hostile encounter with preening bully Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo), who doesn’t appreciate outsiders but loves his gleaming red Vespa more than life itself. But Luca rebels and runs off with Alberto to “the human town,” where the big challenge is to stay dry long enough to pass for real boys and keep their aquatic forms undetected. With such distractions keeping Luca above the surface and away from home, disciplinarian Daniela decides he needs to be sent to stay with creepy Uncle Ugo (Sacha Baron Cohen in a funny cameo), a deep sea-dwelling translucent glow-fish, for the rest of the summer. That instant obsession yields one of a handful of lovely fantasy sequences, in which Luca and Alberto zoom through sun-kissed fields where wild Vespas frolic amid the yellow rapeseed flowers from there, they fly up into the heavens where the stars are constellations of fish. The one that most captures Luca’s dreamer imagination is a metal sign proclaiming, “Vespa is freedom,” advertising the popular moped. Alberto lives in the ruins of a stone tower that he has filled with found treasures. His pluck is bolstered by a new friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), whose experience with amphibious transitions between land and sea modes helps Luca through the bumpy initial stages of learning to walk upright. When Luca starts finding objects lost from fishing boats - an alarm clock, a playing card, a gramophone - his eagerness to explore above the surface gets the better of him.
A quick glimpse of a film still of Marcello Mastroianni also evokes the era. While the time frame is unspecified, the look of the village and the human characters’ clothing in Daniela Strijleva’s gorgeous production design clearly indicate the 1960s, as do the Italian pop hits of artists like Mina, Gianni Morandi and Rita Pavone, sprinkled in among Dan Romer’s gentle melodic score. When Luca strays too far, his mother warns: “The curious fish gets caught.” In what seems a delightful nod from Casarosa to Finding Nemo, the opening shows Luca busy with his daily chores, herding a school of fish that bleat like sheep, and greeting other colorful members of the marine community. He lives with his family - caring but bossy mother Daniela (Maya Rudolph) more laid-back dad Lorenzo (Jim Gaffigan) and chill badass Grandma (Sandy Martin) - in the waters outside the fictional Italian Riviera fishing village Portorosso, where sea monsters hold a prominent place in local lore. Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) is a regular kid who just happens to have gills, a seahorse tail and a head of what looks like wavy coral. Screenwriters: Jesse Andrews, Mike Jones story by Enrico Casarosa, Jesse Andrews, Simon Stephenson Cast: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, Marco Barricelli, Jim Gaffigan, Peter Sohn, Lorenzo Crisci, Marina Massironi, Sandy Martin, Sacha Baron Cohen
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