What do teenagers dream about on the eve of their birthday? About the first (second, third) love. About gadgets. About authority in the eyes of peers. 16-year-old Ian dreams of meeting the father he never knew. And although Ian is an elf, this is almost as impossible in his wizarding world as it is in ours. However, on his birthday, Ian receives an unusual gift…
“A long time ago, the world was full of wonders. Those were the times of feats, adventures, and most importantly — magic. But then something went wrong. Not overnight, not suddenly, but in the way that happens in similar stories: soon the fairy tale is told, but the deed is not done soon.
Little by little, the inhabitants of the magical world began to feel that learning to conjure was somehow too difficult. It is much easier to invent the wheel, electricity, the internal combustion engine and what else is needed for a comfortable life. In a word, fabulous creatures exchanged magic for the achievement of technological progress. Learned how to conjure.
At this point, the reader is likely to think that Forward is a cartoon that can help us believe in miracles again. In a sense, it is. But there are too many such stories. There are far fewer adequate and successful attempts to talk with a young audience about something important: about illness and death, about the loss of loved ones and self-confidence.
All this will face Ian Lightfoot — a notorious elf teenager who, more than anything else, wants to spend at least a day with his father, who died before he was born. Share secrets with him, fool around, play ball or whatever else a father and son are supposed to do. Find a soul mate in dad.
However, sometimes it can be found in someone else. The one who was there all the time. And this simple, quite in the spirit of Disney and Pixar, meaning, as well as compelling and multifaceted characters and witty dialogue, is enough to bring magic back into our lives. After all, it is now so little in the world.
3 more reasons to watch «Forward»
- Voice acting: In the original version, the main characters — Ian and his brother Barley — speak in the voices of Tom Holland and Chris Pratt (Spider-Man and Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy).
- Unusual and yet not too hyped genre, urban fantasy and numerous allusions.
- Personal story: director Dan Scanlon has repeatedly admitted in interviews that he was inspired to shoot the cartoon by the death of his father and relationship with his brother.