Respond to these rapid questions in our Onward Quiz and we will tell you which Onward character you are. Play it now.
This originally aired on March 6 and is being re-aired due to its early VOD release.
“Onward” is a highly intimate song that is based on a tragic premise: the idea of spending one more day with a parent who has died away.
However, until it tries to pluck at your heartstrings in the now-familiar Pixar Animation technique, the high-energy, pop-culture-heavy product feels wildly anxious to please. (Of course, the idea of a deceased parent as a pivotal plot piece is practically written in the Disney script from the beginning.) While walking back to the car after a Saturday morning show, my 10-year-old son made a remark about it.) The film is structured in an episodic format, with the protagonist leaping from one location to another to grab one thing before leaping to another location to get another, and so on in a series of frenetic fetch quests. “Onward” provides a taste of what director and co-writer Dan Scanlon was presumably going for in sharing an intimate piece of his youth on the big screen in the few moments when it slows down and enables its characters to communicate with one another in a meaningful way.
Onward Quiz
Scanlon, who previously directed “Monsters University,” was motivated by the death of his own father when he was just a year old; his older brother had only foggy memories. Scanlon narrates the story of two elven, blue-haired brothers living with their widowed mother in a suburbia that was previously filled of enchantment, with co-screenwriters Jason Headley and Keith Bunin, based on his personal sorrow. It was once a land of unicorns, mermaids, and fairies, with rolling green hills and the scent of pixie dust in the air. It now resembles… Burbank, California, where The Walt Disney Company is headquartered. Tract houses are formed like gigantic mushrooms, and baby dragons serve as cheerful, slobbery pets, revealing the combination of old and new in some interesting ways. While the background details—shafts of sunlight, bumps of asphalt—can be rather lovely in their tactile authenticity, the bulbous and simple character design is blandly off-putting. Also, you will find out which character are you in this Onward Quiz.
Thankfully, the voices of Tom Holland and Chris Pratt are strong enough to partially compensate for this. Holland portrays Ian, a quiet, underweight boy who was in his mother’s womb when his father died; he hopes that turning 16 will drive him to make friends and take risks, and he has a checklist of objectives to do this. Pratt plays Barley, the boisterous older brother who is a little stunted and still lives at home with their mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who makes you wish there was more to her character); he plays a Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing game and drives a retro van with a unicorn emblazoned on the side. Despite (or perhaps because of) their innate differences, the two have a nice chemistry with one other. So when Barley says to Ian early on, “There’s a magnificent warrior inside of you, you just have to let him out,” the sentiment is genuine and doesn’t come across as mawkish as it may appear on the page. (Plus, it’s amusing to envision an universe where Spider-Man and Star Lord are brothers who like to tease each other.) Also, you must try to play this Onward Quiz.
About the quiz
When their mother discloses a secret to them, one she was supposed to keep concealed until Ian’s 16th birthday, both boys get a chance to unleash their inner adventurer: Their father had left them an ancient staff with a valuable jewel atop it. Those artifacts, coupled with a few magical words, would return him to them for 24 hours—but they could only cast the spell once, and it had to be perfect. Naturally, nothing goes as planned in the thrill of this newfound knowledge; they only get halfway through the spell, resulting in their father appearing as nothing more than a pair of khakis and shoes with wacky socks from the waist down. It’s an odd concept with an even stranger visual. To make the most of their limited time with him, they must embark on a journey through their seemingly ordinary village to complete what they began and restore their father’s health.
They try to achieve this by pulling their half-father around, stuffing a stuffed body and a baseball cap into his pants, and trying to appear normal in public while yanking him about with a retractable dog leash. The sloppy, “Weekend at Bernie’s”-style physical humor is amusing for a few minutes, but it rapidly becomes tiresome and feels like cheap, go-to routine. A family-friendly tavern, complete with a salad bar and a claw machine, that used to be a dangerous hangout for fearsome creatures of all kinds is one of their many stops; the manager, a once-powerful manticore (Octavia Spencer, a standout), has grown complacent but yearns to reclaim her badassery of yore. In a subplot that feels crammed in and does both of these extremely gifted actors a disservice, she becomes dragged into the search, along with Ian and Barley’s mother. And the ultimate fight with a homemade monster is nothing but chaos and devastation—until it abruptly comes to a teary-eyed end.
Because of the jarring pacing, the emotional reward does not develop as expected. And, of course, the broader irony is that this is a film about the need for magic that could have used a bit more of it. But if it makes you think warmly of your parents, even for a few period, that’s something.
For more personality quizzes check this: Knives Out Quiz.
