91 min | PG | February 19, 2021 | Walt Disney Pictures
A cynical ten-year-old revives a squirrel that comes back with superpowers. It can fly, type poetry, and understand every word she says. The real magic trick is using the rodent to glue a broken family back together.
Flora is a ten-year-old comic book obsessive who declares herself a cynic. She believes in nothing until she watches a squirrel get vacuumed up by a runaway lawnmower and revives it with mouth-to-mouth. The squirrel, Ulysses, comes back with superpowers. He understands language, he types poetry, and he can fly across a kitchen. The film uses this absurd premise to drag a wounded family back toward each other, because Flora’s real problem is not the squirrel. It is her parents, who have separated, and a mother who has stopped paying attention.
Matilda Lawler plays Flora with a flat, deadpan delivery that refuses to beg for sympathy. She reads superhero rules aloud like legal statutes and treats the squirrel as a serious responsibility. Alyson Hannigan plays Phyllis, the mother, a romance novelist with writer’s block who has retreated into resentment. Ben Schwartz plays George, the father, with the bruised optimism of a man waiting to be let back in. Danny Pudi shows up as Miller, an overzealous animal control officer building the closest thing the movie has to a villain. Anna Deavere Smith grounds her brief scenes as Dr. Meescham, the neighbor who treats a magic squirrel as ordinary fact.
Lena Khan directs from Brad Copeland’s screenplay, adapted from Kate DiCamillo’s novel. The film leans on the visual effects team to make Ulysses act, and the animation gives him a precise comic timing that the human cast plays against. Khan blocks the squirrel into real space convincingly. He sits on shoulders, knocks over coffee, and reacts to dialogue with small head tilts that carry the joke. The cinematography stays bright and unfussy, and the editing cuts to Ulysses for reaction shots the way a sitcom cuts to a studio audience. The score telegraphs every emotional beat well before the actors get there.
This is a competent family film that knows exactly how big it wants to be. Khan keeps the tone gentle and the stakes small, and the squirrel never becomes more than a device to thaw a frozen household. The jokes land softly and the sentiment arrives on schedule. Nothing here surprises, and nothing here insults the kids it is made for. It is a pleasant ninety minutes that hits its marks and asks for nothing in return.