The film starts strong with a wealth of rapid-fire visual gags — and I’m doing my darndest not to spoil them, I promise. Yet at first glance, the resulting brothers-on-an-adventure story might seem rote in comparison. Haven’t we seen this before?
One way the film differs on a character-building level from the usual fare, however, is in Barley’s atypical take on the older “bad boy” brother archetype. His heart of gold and thirst for adventure line up surprisingly neatly next to his disregard for rules and conventions, and these prove to be the perfect foil for Ian to break out of expected younger-brother clichés. As it turns out, each brother has a reason to be annoyed, impatient, or outright disappointed by the other, and the siblings take turns being a villain or opponent for each other, all while they unite (or fail to do so) in chasing a greater purpose.
through their quest, the boys resolve certain problems in unsurprising fashion. A strained friendship is resolved by joining forces. Yawn, duh, film at 17. But even this resolution comes with its own surprises and sweetness, as the boys find organic opportunities to bond and talk through certain story beats between zanier scenes of action and comedy — and each gains a newfound respect for the other that is paid off handsomely by the film’s end. The pacing is masterful, and it’s helped by each actor applying a delicate touch to the awkwardness of being a teen — while also nailing some serious comedic timing. The touching results make similar fare, particularly Shrek and Donkey’s first-film journey, seem “kiddie” in comparison.
(I nearly typed out how some of this brotherly plot is resolved in Onward , but I instead deleted it and wiped tears from my eyes, remembering how absolutely touched I was by the surprising results. I would like for you to experience the resolution in the same way that I did.)
The boys are brought together in part by a running gag that, sadly, the film’s trailer has already spoiled; I’ve endeavored to leave that detail out of the above gallery. Instead, I’ll simply say that the cast of supporting characters works almost entirely in service to Ian and Barley’s journey, and this strikes a gentle balance between first-blush laughs (“ha, they made a classic fantasy archetype do a surprisingly funny thing in modern, American life “) and an eventual drop of funny dialogue and jokes those characters offer. The cast’s greatest casualty is the mom Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who doesn’t really get credit as a matriarch — though it’s easy to lose track of this while watching the film, considering how the boys’ scenes play out in thoughtful, entertaining fashion. In good news, Laurel at least gets her own hilarious scenes, particularly when she joins forces with a restaurant-managing manticore (Octavia Spencer) and confuses the heck out of her boyfriend Colt (Mel Rodriguez, Little Miss Sunshine .
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