2 hours ago
6
A shooting star arching over the Disney castle. Luxo Jr. hopping into frame and jumping on the “i” in “Pixar.” Totoro standing in profile against a bright cerulean backdrop. These sights have come to inspire a Pavlovian response from generations of children, and — no less powerfully — a Proustian one from their parents. They are invitations to (and promises of) the special kind of joy, wonder, and magic that can only be found in the movies.
For some reason, the words “Produced by Josh Lasseter and David Ellison” don’t quite trigger the same response from my two young children (even if one of those names is plastered across so many of their favorite movies), to say nothing of the Skydance Animation logo that precedes those credits.
“Isn’t it exciting,” I shout at them as my eyes turn obsidian black, “that what you’re about to watch was personally overseen by the Gary Busey look-alike who will soon be in charge of the entire media landscape!!?” They grow scared and try to hide under the small couch blankets they’ve long outgrown. “HE WAS IN FLYBOYS!!!” I snap. This is a core memory being formed. This is beautiful. This is what it’s all about.
…which is just to say that Swapped” — a Netflix release — was facing an uphill battle with my family when I first put it on. And also with me, as Skydance Animation’s two previous films (the risible “Luck,” and the presumably-better-than-“Luck”-but-I’ll-never-know-for-sure-because-I-was-still-too-traumatized-by-the-pain-of-watching-“Luck”-when-it-came-out “Spellbound”) hadn’t done a lot to inspire confidence, even if Netflix has become a more credible distributor of animation in the wake of “KPop Demon Hunters.”
But “Swapped,” I’m relieved to report, has a little more going for it than either of its studio’s previous efforts. The first is that it was directed by Nathan Greno, whose “Tangled” remains one of the more inspired cartoon musicals of the computer animation era. The second is another first: Michael B. Jordan’s first role since winning Best Actor in March.
His wonderfully emotive, Disney-clear voice is maybe a little too low for the character he plays here (a tiny woodland creature who resembles a yassified Rescue Ranger), but kids love “Sinners,” and Jordan’s character transforms into a larger animal by the end of the first act anyway. But what really elevates “Swapped” above “Luck” and I’m guessing also “Spellbound” is that it so transparently borrows — let’s go with “borrows” — from the same animation studios that Skydance lacks the creative vision to compete with on its own merits. It’s the work of a company that knows its place, even if that place will hopefully change with the release of Brad Bird’s “Ray Gunn” later this year.
A cute, simple, and very colorful fable of a film that will almost exclusively appeal to the youngest of kids, “Swapped” isn’t as dire as its “freeze frame, record-scratch, ‘Yep, that’s me’” of an opening would suggest. The speaker is a big-eyed, puppy-nosed sea otter-like critter — a “pookoo” — named Ollie (Jordan), who we meet as he’s skittering away from the claws of a feathered “javan,” a parakeet-looking bird species who survive on the same little seeds that Ollie’s kind do. Ollie was a curious pookoo as a child, but we learn that he’s been successfully conditioned to fear and/or distrust all of the other creatures in the Valley (his dad, voiced by Cedric the Entertainer, preaches “Hide today, alive tomorrow” as the family motto). Now he hates the javan as much as the javan seem to hate him.
If only the area’s different animals could speak to each other, maybe they could come to an understanding! Alas, the mythic Dzo — lumbering, mossy, elephant-like orchids that bear a damning resemblance to the Italian Brainrot character Brr Brr Patapim, a fact that no adult should have to know — left the valley a long time ago, and they’ve taken their magic pods with them. You know, the pods that allow animals to transform into each other at will, thus allowing for interspecies communication (and the empathy that comes with it).
But wait, good news! Ollie falls into a strange hole where he finds one of the legendary pods, and the next thing he knows he can fly and speak Javan. And that’s not all, because the same javan that was chasing him earlier soon turns into a pookoo. It turns out her name is Ivy and she sounds like a dead ringer for Juno Temple. The next thing you know, these star-crossed frenemies are bickering their way across the Valley on a quest to find the Dzo and get back into their old bodies, but maybe — just maybe — they’ll learn to like each other along the way, and come to discover how they might be able to bring a lasting sense of peace to their shared habitat.
Christian Magalhaes, Robert Snow, and John Whittington’s script is powered by banter so generic that my three-year-old daughter, tears in her eyes, asked me why Noah Baumbach wasn’t called in to do an uncredited punch-up, but Tracy Morgan — voicing a “boogoo,” a grouper-like fish with algae for fins — can make even the most ChatGPT-level dialogue sound at least somewhat original, and “Swapped” perks up whenever he swims onto the scene.
Other creatures abound, all of them combining animal life and foliage with the same mix-and-match obviousness that the rest of this movie combines basic Disney adventuring with Miyazakian eco-concern. We meet bears whose backs are covered in grass, “fire wolves” whose spines are lined with desiccated red leaves, fish whose scales are weighed down by all manner of plant life, and so on.
These concepts are all simple enough for a toddler to understand, but the rest of “Swapped” isn’t quite so locked in on its target audience. Fast-paced as it is, the film is in low supply of the comic energy that keeps children engaged (the lack of musical numbers doesn’t help), and while its world is bright enough to work as a distracting bauble, kids will struggle to stay engaged long enough to get anything out of its message about how a scarcity mindset — and the lack of open communication that it breeds — can turn the whole world into resentful strangers.
“Swapped” largely ignores the fact that some of its characters would prefer to eat other rather than survive on “piplet” seeds, but I suppose that could be seen as a key part of the parable in its own right. “You can never trust any other creature” if you want to survive, Ollie’s dad tells him, but our hero will have to trust other creatures — and walk in their shoes, so to speak — if he wants to save his Valley from ruin. But he doesn’t, and they all die, the end.
I joke, I joke, but with the exception of one smart and surprising character reveal, there isn’t really a whole lot going on here; whatever momentum the story has is provided by Siddhartha Khosla’s lush and expansive score. The music joins the casting and a too-scary third act as the only elements of this movie that don’t fully embrace its bar-lowering lack of ambition — the only elements that don’t feel pilfered from pre-existing classics.
But there are far more insidious amusements for pre-school kids who’ve already committed “My Neighbor Totoro” to memory, and “Swapped” is almost unnervingly comfortable with its nature as a fleeting distraction from the films that children will want to watch over and over. Troubled as I am that Hollywood’s future has been entrusted to — or purchased by — someone whose vision seems limited to the lowest common denominator, I’m trying to feel reassured by the fact of a Skydance Animation movie that knows exactly what it is and delivers on that purpose.
Perhaps, when the studio ups its ambitions in the future, it will fulfill them with the same accuracy. Perhaps, one day, its logo will come to represent something more than corporate mega-mergers.
Grade: C
“Swapped” is now available to stream on Netflix.
Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.
English (US) ·