Two of the most iconic animated figures of all time—Stitch and Toothless—have now made their debuts on the big screen in perfectly realized 3D glory. But despite how well portrayed these classic characters are, there’s still one cuddly creature that debuted this year that has them beat.
I would die for Baby Ochi.
That’s it. That’s basically the review.
Baby Ochi is the reason to see this movie. He has a strong dash of Grogu mixed with maybe a bit of Gizmo. But it’s important to note this is state-of-the-art puppetry at its finest to bring a brand new cinematic creature that feels like you can reach out and touch it.
The movie surrounding baby Ochi, though, is a bit of a problem. Speaking of How to Train Your Dragon, this follows a lot of the same basic structure as those movies.
Our protagonist is a young girl, Yuri, played by Helena Zengel (News of the World) who is extremely quiet and keeps her emotions mostly bottled up. While Zengel does a decent job portraying the character, the character doesn’t afford a lot of connection.
Yuri’s father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) leads the small island village’s young men on nightly raids to go find and kill the mystical Ochi, monkey-like animals that supposedly are killing the islands livestock and endangering its inhabitants. Particularly driving Maxim is that the Ochi apparently took his wife (Yuri’s mother). Maxim and Yuri don’t quite understand each other and have seemingly no relationship.
By the way, Finn Wolfhard is Petro, one of the young men led by Maxim. While serving as the most brother-like figure to Yuri, he is given next to nothing to do in the film, which makes it an odd and somewhat distracting casting choice.
The film kicks off when Yuri discovers an injured baby Ochi and decides to return it to its family after connecting with it. This is one of the best moments in the film, and really every moment shared between just Yuri and Ochi is generally fantastic. It’s all the other humans and plot contrivances that stand in the way.
At its best, in moments like these, the film operates on an almost Spielbergian level with a European arthouse flair. But first-time director Isaiah Saxon, who also wrote the film, can’t quite seem to find his footing with the story. There are sprinkles of black comedy that really worked, and I wish the movie leaned into that, but it doesn’t.
By the end of the runtime, we come to a hamfisted conclusion about the importance of family, with the reunion of baby Ochi with his family supposed to mirror what is happening with Yuri’s family, but it just feels hollow. I couldn’t begin to tell you how they are alike.
Dafoe is batty as usual in this film, but his character is just weird. There’s no real arc for him, and nothing for Dafoe to latch onto to create a great character.
Emily Watson plays Yuri’s lost mother in a role I won’t spoil too much, and I think Watson did a good job of performing the character on the page. I’m just not sure what the idea behind that character is really meant to be.
Despite the wonky, somewhat boring plot, it’s worth watching at least once just for baby Ochi. As long as he is on screen, everything else can kind of fade into the background. So, despite my rating, I would recommend checking this out once it hits streaming.
