95 min | PG | June 18, 2021 | Pixar
A sea monster boy sneaks onto land off the Italian Riviera and discovers he passes for human the second he dries off. He teams up with another runaway fish-out-of-water to chase a Vespa, gelato, and a whole summer of belonging. It is Pixar in a minor key, and it knows it.
Luca Paguro is a sea monster. He herds fish in the waters off the Italian Riviera and dreams about the surface world his mother forbids him to visit. He meets Alberto, another young sea monster, who shows him the secret. The moment they step onto dry land and shed the water from their skin, they pass for human boys. The two sneak into the seaside town of Portorosso, where being discovered means harpoons. Luca is a film about friendship and the fear of being seen for what you actually are.
Jacob Tremblay voices Luca with a timid wonder that turns every new sight into a small revelation. He plays the boy as cautious until Alberto talks him into bravery. Jack Dylan Grazer voices Alberto with swaggering bravado that thinly covers loneliness, and the performance lets you hear the abandonment under the confidence. Emma Berman voices Giulia, the human girl who takes them in, with a manic outsider energy that makes her the heart of the trio. Saverio Raimondo voices Ercole, the preening town bully, as a teenager who mistakes cruelty for charisma. Maya Rudolph voices Daniela, Luca’s mother, with a protectiveness that curdles into panic when her son vanishes.
Enrico Casarosa directs his first feature and builds the story with writers Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones. He pushes Pixar off its house gloss toward something hand-shaped and storybook. The character designs are rounded and caricatured, and the Ligurian coast glows with a painted warmth that recalls Italian cinema more than American animation. The transformation effect does real narrative work. Water beads on the boys and reveals scales and fins underneath, so the threat of exposure lives in every splash and sudden rain. Portorosso is constructed from cobblestone, espresso, and a Vespa the boys treat as a religion.
This is Pixar working small on purpose. There are no world-ending stakes and no high-concept emotional machinery, just two boys and one summer. The film trades ambition for warmth and mostly gets away with it. The metaphor of the sea monster as the kid who hides what he is stays gentle and never digs as deep as the premise allows. What lasts is the texture of a specific friendship and the ache of knowing the summer ends. Luca is a postcard, and it is happy to be one.