OVERVIEW
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets The Hangover, with a visual style so frantic that it would make even KPop Demon Hunters feel subtle. That is probably the easiest way to describe DreamWorks’ latest, Forgotten Island. It follows two childhood friends, Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), on the verge of being separated as the latter prepares to move to the United States for college. During their last night together, they discover a portal to Nakali, an island filled with creatures from the stories they heard growing up. Yet, shortly after arriving, they realize they have lost the memory of their first day there and must retrace their steps to figure out what happened and find a way back home.
BACKGROUND
By the mid-2020s, DreamWorks had increasingly moved away from the polished CG house style that defined much of its earlier work, embracing the freedom opened up by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and merging handmade aesthetics with more exaggerated movement and increasingly adventurous visual choices. Few filmmakers at the studio have been more closely associated with that transition than Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado. Their Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, directed by Crawford and co-directed by Mercado, combined painterly backgrounds, changing frame rates, and anime-inspired action into one of DreamWorks’ biggest visual departures. Forgotten Island feels like the next step in that progression. The CG animation is even more restless, while memories allow the filmmakers to jump into completely different styles inspired by Dragon Ball Z, 1990s Street Fighter, and Sailor Moon, including extended 2D sequences produced with Manila-based Snipple Animation. For Crawford and Mercado, who have worked together since Kung Fu Panda 2, this is also their first opportunity to apply all that experimentation to an original world of their own.
THE REVIEW
The result of all this effort is nothing short of breathtaking, even if the sheer amount happening on screen can become exhausting. Forgotten Island is packed with visual detail and creativity, from the character designs and the way they move to the little flourishes and elastic transformations that would make Sergei Eisenstein proud. It is a reminder of why DreamWorks spent so long as one of the two leading studios in American animation and, especially compared with its biggest rival, Pixar, how committed the studio remains to pushing the form forward rather than settling into the visual language that made it successful. As a showcase for how far mainstream animation has come, Forgotten Island is terrific. As an audiovisual experience, it can also be overwhelming.
That feeling comes not only from the density of information on screen, but from an editing style that moves with the speed of modern Reels, much like GOAT did earlier this year. Add some ultra-modern music choices and a style of humor clearly designed for a generation raised on TikTok, and it often feels like DreamWorks is chasing some of the same memeable potential that made KPop Demon Hunters such a phenomenon. Those already accustomed to this kind of attention overload will probably have a blast. Anyone who would rather sit quietly and read a book may feel tortured by the sheer amount of audiovisual information being thrown at them.
Underneath all that noise, however, is a considerably more accessible story about a female friendship being challenged by how different these two women have become, wrapped inside an adventure that introduces a surprising number of creative and memorable supporting characters. The most notable are Raww, the weredog voiced by Dave Franco, whose voice fits animation almost ridiculously well, Batiba (Jenny Slate), the demon who trades in memories, and Manang (Lea Salonga), the film’s terrifying Manananggal. The latter may have a less original visual design, looking suspiciously close to the demons from KPop Demon Hunters, but the macabre and enticing way she moves more than compensates for it. Others, including Prince Mermahn, the tribe of tiny mushroom warriors, and the giant baby demon Bungi, serve their purpose well enough, but the film keeps introducing so many new characters that they begin to blur together, with several never escaping their one-note, one-joke function.
The adventure itself moves well through a world that always seems to have something new waiting around the corner, but that constant discovery also comes at the expense of developing Jo and Raissa during the journey. Almost every stop requires the film to pause and introduce another character, another location or another piece of mythology, stealing time from the friendship that is supposed to hold everything together. It is obvious fairly early where their relationship is going, but most of its actual development happens within the first 15 minutes. Once they reach the island, the film largely puts it aside until the third act. The scene where everything finally comes together is emotional, but never as much as the best films of its kind, or as much as it could have been if each stop along the way had somehow connected Jo and Raissa back to a specific memory or experience they shared. In that sense, the marketing almost sells a better version of the film, one that feels much closer to the emotional structure of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind than the movie actually is.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Still, when all is said and done, Forgotten Island is a fun adventure set inside a world overflowing with creativity. Many of the jokes work, the reverence for Filipino culture is admirable, and the animation is constantly impressive. It never finds the balance that something like Coco does between cultural specificity, adventure, and emotional storytelling, but DreamWorks’ commitment to squeezing almost everything animation can do into a single film is difficult not to admire. Whatever its problems, that is one thing about Forgotten Island that should not be forgotten.
Still courtesy of Universal Pictures Canada
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- Where to watch
- New In Theaters
- Where to watch
- In Theaters
Play trailer
- Original title
- Forgotten Island
- Director
- Januel Mercado, Joel Crawford
- Cast
- H.E.R., Liza Soberano, Dave Franco, Lea Salonga, Manny Jacinto, Jenny Slate, Dolly de Leon, Jo Koy
- Rated
- PG
- Screenwriter
- Joel Crawford, Januel Mercado, Simon Wells
- Composer
- Nathan Matthew David
- Editor
- James Ryan
- Country
- Language
- English
- Budget
- $80 million
- Box office
- $21.474 million
- Distributor (CA)
- Universal Pictures Canada