Unfortunately, this trailer dropped late at night, so I was unable to review it then – but we’re here now, aren’t we? Honestly, I have no idea who at Pixar and Disney thought it was a good idea to release the first teaser trailer for an animated kid’s movie at night, it’s not like this is going to be Maleficent or something, but whatever.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
Right off the bat, the animation looks pretty good, as we soar over a mystical land of magic and wonder, populated by flying unicorns and mermaids. Then, in a charming shot, we see a jet-plane interrupt the tranquility of this strange place. After that initial moment of wonder, the trailer goes rapidly downhill as we enter the magical suburbs where our protagonists live.
Don’t get me wrong, none of that has to do with voice actors Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. Holland sounds essentially like…well, like Holland, which works for his character; a shy, scrawny, teenage elf named Ian Lightfoot, who is clearly modeled off the actor’s more notable role as Spider-man, presumably in an attempt to attract Holland’s mobs of overzealous fans (though his fans would ravenously devour him in any role, to be honest). Pratt’s character, Barley Lightfoot (seriously, that’s his name), the brother of our teenage elf protagonist, is some sort of grungy adventurer who drives around in a unicorn-emblazoned van, talking loudly and using archaic words – like an entire movie of Pratt’s Marvel character Star-Lord copying Thor’s voice, from that iconic scene in Avengers: Infinity War. The two elf brothers are apparently on a quest (which Holland’s elf denies is a quest) to find the last remaining real magic in their world, somewhere outside of their town of…New Mushroomton (as if the names in this movie didn’t already sound rather trippy, New Mushroomton is all the evidence you need to prove that someone working on this film is smoking something).
And it’s New Mushroomton that’s the problem, as one might expect. Yes, the whole premise of the movie is that magic is now commonplace: we see mermaids checking their texts while lounging in the pool, centaurs jogging, unicorns raiding garbage cans like really sparkly raccoons. That’s fine, but the animation doesn’t illustrate this concept with charm or the usual Pixar wit – the New Mushroomton suburbs look rather boring, and what could be some really juxtapositions of the magic and the mundane…look pretty unimaginative. For instance, Ian Lightfoot’s pet being a dragon that acts like a dog – that is the easiest possible choice, and it’s been done before! Why not have the dragon be a cat? – or, better yet, have the Lightfoots’ pet be something interesting, like a giant spider or a phoenix, or something.
I mean, yeah, it’s just a brief teaser trailer, but it does nothing to excite me in the way that a Pixar film usually would; so far, I’m not seeing the creativity I’m used to seeing from this studio.
Trailer Rating: 4.5/10