87 min | PG | October 27, 2023 | Paramount Pictures
Two young crabs from feuding clans fall for each other in the wet sand under a Jersey Shore boardwalk. David Soren turns Romeo and Juliet into a musical with claws and a head full of songs. The shape is older than the tide, and the movie never once fights it.
Armen is a young crab who lives under a Jersey Shore boardwalk. Ramona belongs to a rival crab clan that his own family will not abide. The two meet, they fall for each other, and the old grudges close in around them. This is Romeo and Juliet rebuilt for children and staged in a tide pool. Under the surface, the film is about inherited hatred and whether the next generation has to carry it forward. The template is ancient and the movie knows it.
Michael Cera voices Armen with the hesitant, half-swallowed delivery he has built a career on. Cera makes the crab sound nervous and decent and a little overwhelmed by his own feelings. Keke Palmer plays Ramona with brass and forward momentum and gives the romance its engine. Bobby Cannavale voices Bobby with the loud Jersey bluster the part demands. Steven Van Zandt brings real boardwalk gravel to Bruno. John Magaro and Jon Rudnitsky fill out the supporting crabs as Manny and Jimmy, and Vanessa Bell Calloway anchors the older generation as Val.
David Soren directs from a script he wrote with Lorene Scafaria. Soren stages the musical numbers as the film’s pulse and lets the songs carry the emotional turns the dialogue only sketches. Scafaria, who writes adult comedies, sharpens the banter past what the genre asks for. The animation builds a whole world out of one cramped location, with the pilings and wet sand and filtered light under the boards rendered in warm color. The character design leans into the comedy of crabs, all sideways scuttle and waving claws. The look is bright and clean and never strains for more than it can deliver.
Under the Boardwalk does everything a family animated feature is supposed to do. The romance is sweet, the lesson about dropping old hatreds lands clean, and the songs keep the energy high. None of it surprises you. The film hits every beat of the star-crossed story exactly where you expect the beat to fall. It is pleasant and competent and built to be forgotten by the time you reach the parking lot. There is nothing wrong with it and nothing in it that stays.