Director Dan Scanlon tells how his own childhood loss informs the movie, which also has Disney’s first gay character. ‘We want it to feel real,’ he says
Pixar/Disney is known for wringing tears from every gorgeous frame and Onward, its new big-budget offering, tells the story of two teenage elves: Ian (Tom Holland) and his older brother Barley Lightfoot (Chris Pratt), whose late father left a gift for them to open on Ian’s 16th birthday. It is a spell, which offers them an unimaginable opportunity: to spend one more day with him.
Then the spell goes wrong, or rather, only half-right. The brothers are granted only Dad’s purple-socked, chino-clad, dancing legs – and a quest is required to bring all of him back. What follows is hilarious and heartbreaking, both for people who have never experienced such grief, and those who have. When Ian briefly meets an old schoolfriend of his father’s, who provides new, precious details of his life, the moment resonates powerfully, as does Ian playing a cassette of his father’s voice, with which he holds a conversation.