She’s not a monster, as Ballister fearfully assumes, but a well-meaning misfit. She laughs at Ballister’s paternal concern and also shields herself from easy typecasting by waving away his “small-minded questions.” The why of Nimona doesn’t matter, she says, but she eventually provides an origin story later on, which ostensibly endears her to us even more. Their hearts are in the right place, but their mouths-and doe eyes, and glass-cutting jawlines-just pay lip service.Ĭase in point: While Nimona obviously matters to the plot and exhaustively detailed themes, she’s eventually prescribed with the sort of backstory that even Nimona, in an early scene, scoffs at. Unfortunately, several of the main characters’ facial expressions seem more like dutiful mimicry-“Nimona” was based on ND Stevenson’s graphic novel-than a convincing vehicle for the characters’ emotions. The characters, whose designs were partly modeled after the styles of the formative Disney background artist Eyvind Earle and the “minimal realist” illustrator Charley Harper, fly around the screen with enough keenly observed, fluid grace to remind you that many passionate animators made and put serious thought into the making of this movie. “Nimona” also features a bunch of post-post-punk anthems and punk-adjacent music of variable quality, including at least one Metric song (“Gold Guns Girls”) and some guitar riffs by ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones.
There’s some lightly likable dad-friendly puns, sight gags, and a bunch of angsty declaiming about questioning authority, being true to yourself, and other bumper-stick-ready slogans. “Nimona” feels more like a dramatized checklist of stylistic tics and emotional beats from both Pixar and DreamWorks’ animation studios’ greatest hits.
0 kommentar(er)
