Both an irreverent parable, a warning for our future and a derivative tale of connection across decades, Arco is a very likeable sci-fi tale.
The colourful feature animation debut from French filmmaker Ugo Bienvenu Arco is a disarmingly harsh kids film with some genuinely dark and ruminative central questions on the state of our planet. Don’t let our central protagonist Arco’s (Juliano Krue Valdi) colourful, time-travelling jumpsuit fool you. This animation can be bleak and brooding yet crucially retains hope for our future or futures with cheery beams of light piercing through like a fading rainbow.
Leading us through two separate futures we open in a peaceful and idyllic existence where humans live above the clouds. Earth has been given a reset and time travel is now possible through means of flying through wormholes using the aforementioned rainbow jumpsuits. A young boy named Arco dreams of flying but twelve is the legal age to safely partake. Defying his parents he borrows his sister’s jumpsuit and accidentally travels back in time to 2075 where he meets Iris (Romy Fay). Iris lives in an environmentally fragile time period, she is cared for by her robot nanny Mikki (Natalie Portman & Mark Ruffalo on double voice duty) and she must help Arco return to his time after finding him unconscious in the woods despite their evident connection. Iris is lonely and her parents (also voiced by Portman and Ruffalo) work in the city only returning on weekends and speaking to her through distant holograms. Technology and convenience has replaced connection in her world but in Arco’s family is foremost. It smartly speaks on the cyclical nature of periods in history where ideals and values shift depending on the factor or resource humans have exhausted or taken too far.
The animation style is remarkably realistic despite representing the type of hand drawn throwback of an early Disney effort like Pinocchio or Bambi. The faces of both humans and the countless robots are impressively expressive, it is easy to decipher emotion and bathe in the beauty of the craft alone. While the main storyline can be derivative – boy meets girl, boy must return home, girl learns valuable lessons and perspective is shifted – Bienvenu takes risks not often seen in a film aimed at both adults and children. The emphasis on environmental collapse is timely and the film doesn’t shy away from death or the idea of the trudging, harsh reality of time. In laying out two futures, one less bleak than the other because of the mistakes of the former, it provides a thoughtful message that we can change the future if we change our behaviour and values in the present.
Certain characters are shoved into the narrative and do not compliment what should have been the main focus on the central three of Arco, Iris and Mikki. There is a three stooges-esque chase element with quirky guys wearing rainbow glasses and constantly bickering, Dougie (Will Ferrell), Frankie (Flea) and Stewie (Andy Samberg) who are attempting to prove they’re not crazy and Arco’s people do in fact exist. This thread eventually leads to nowhere and fails to provide the throwback humour it attempts. Similarly a young boy in Iris’s class Clifford (Wyatt Danieluk) who may or may not have a crush on her becomes involved in the ragtag crew culminating in a simple lesson that adds one too many flavors to the already pretty full pot. The handling of robot Mikki is the most refreshing and endearing and his arc reaches a highly satisfying and unique conclusion providing a lot of the emotional heft. The film is weak in practising restraint but in the unbalanced chaos there is a watchable, chaotic energy that mostly levels out the messiness.
The Verdict: 6.5/10
Arco’s ambitions are both in the clouds and with its feet firmly on the ground. In many ways this is an experimental approach to animated filmmaking that in the end, ultimately relies on old-school storytelling. Worth a watch for the beautiful world building but light on any hidden deeper meaning.
