Over the Moon

With how oversaturated the family friendly movie genre tends to be, many of them can be accused of being lazy and formulaic to a fault. Sure the animation on some of these works can be great to watch with certain sequences but if the writing has nothing much to offer with making either the characters or the plot memorable, often ends up feeling like throwaway bargain bin flicks. Even heavy weight animation studios such as Disney and Dreamworks are susceptible to this in the past (an example that comes to mind being Onward). This brings us to a new project from Pearl Studio (which is connected to Dreamworks via a joint venture), Over the Moon, which was directed by former Disney animator Glen Keane (who also did the Kobe Bryant animated short Dear Basketball). Like most of the recent reviews here, my knowledge of this film was non-existent except that it was released onto Netflix in October. I wanted to see if it can bring strength to the 2020 animated movie roster but, after watching it, it left me underwhelmed in its execution. 

What's it about? Taking place 4 years after her mothers death, a pre-teen creates a rocket ship to the moon to prove to her father (who's dating someone new) that the goddess from a fairytale exists. To get this out the way, the animation work for the environments (both in the Chinese village and on the moon) are very beautiful and colorful to watch with details like the family food at dinner as well as neon color palates are visual eye candy. The story itself has good seeds of potential with the beginning setup in not only skipping the funeral segment to having a time skip but also a reaction to seeing a widowed parent get back into dating. The message it's aiming for is nothing new but the way it's done is very sweet in a pretty good scene in the ending. 

However, the execution of everything in between the first and final act presents issues that the script was unable to overcome. Once the active characters arrive moon, the screenplay does too many activities that focus is lost as there are multiple sidekicks involved (2 animals and 1 human) splitting up that time. The humor is certainly family friendly but almost none of the land as well as they think they do (especially when it's trying to be hip with kids). There are musical segments involved but only a few of them are fairly solid while the rest are either boring (trying too hard to be Disney-esque) or are cringe to listen to (a rap song that's over-compsenating). The writing displayed is incredibly weak and generic that turns this concept which had potential and turns it into another bland Dreamworks project. 

 

How are the actors? In regards to story importance, the actors to focus on are Cathy Ang and Phillipa Soo. Cathy does a serviceable job as the lead that's given a familiar archetype from doing a decent job being disruptive with family to just being stubborn until she inevitably learns a lesson. Phillipa is a better actress to highlight in terms of having a bit more of a spark and some good songs on her end. Dishonorable mention goes to Robert Chiu for being too grating to listen to as a little brother with a bland personality (the standard means well but wants to ram head into walls to break barriers).

 

Overall Consensus: Over the Moon's good premise concept and gorgeous animation are held back by a frantic screenplay, generic characters lacking depth, hit or miss songs, and a predictable formulaic plot. ⭑⭑⭑ Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes PG

 

Reasons to watch it: You like any of the aforementioned actors and/or director Glen Keane. You don't mind generic writing as long as the look of the settings brings visual eye candy. You want to have something on as background noise with occasional musical songs involved. You enjoy seeing Chinese culture displayed in a respectful manner. 

 

Reasons to avoid it: You dislike any of the aforementioned actors and/or director Glen Keane. You dislike generic writing trying to hide behind visual eye candy. You are bored by overused cliches in flicks that don't feel like they are trying something new. You are annoyed with frantic actions going on in order to fill the runtime.