There is a lot going on in Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s “Forgotten Island,” a heartfelt but exhaustingly hyper-frenetic Dreamworks Animation comedy that remixes “Superbad,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and “The Hangover” into a rave-like children’s adventure steeped in Filipino folklore.
It’s a touching story of memory and friendship (one that sees the “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Kung Fu Panda” production studio doubling down on the raw emotionality that worked so well for “The Wild Robot”), and also a manic cartoon that goes out of its way to make a joke about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars (because Dreamworks is still the house that “Shrek” built, at the end of the day). It’s a heavily researched but kid-friendly glimpse into a culture that Hollywood has never drawn to life before, and also an anime-inspired piece of cultural syncretism that repeatedly incorporates actual footage from the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic “Predator.”
Did I mention that Dave Franco voices a cool pubescent weredog — a combination of words that no human has ever typed before — who uncontrollably transforms into a tiny chihuahua whenever he gets too close to a stick?
Like I said, it’s a lot. Sometimes — frequently — too much. But it’s hard to complain about “too much” at a time when most of the animated movies this country pumps out aren’t nearly enough. While “Forgotten Island” is relentless, distractable, and overstuffed to a degree that waters down the simple power of its message (and makes it difficult to understand the basic principles of its plot), none of its lovingly sourced ingredients ever lose the basic essence of their flavor.
Ironically, “Forgotten Island” is actually at its most lucid and affecting during the mad frenzy of its Manila-set first act, the pacing of which is even more insane than the rest of the movie that follows. Our story blasts off with a rocket fuel that beautifully conveys the frisson of a great childhood friendship: It’s the early 1990s, texting isn’t a thing yet, INXS is one of the biggest bands on Earth, and a violently imaginative tween orphan named Jo (voiced by the musician H.E.R.) is one detention away from being kicked out of yet another school after she goes a bit overboard with her latest creative writing assignment. Like most of Jo’s work, it is inspired by the tales her grandmother Lola (Dolly de Leon) has told her about a mythical island called Nakalimutan. Jo is particularly drawn to a dreaded flying vampire-like creature known as Manang (Lea Salonga), who can separate her body at the hips and stalk her prey from both sides at once.
The teacher isn’t much of a fan (and parents should be warned that Manang is pure nightmare fuel when she eventually shows up), but another girl in the class is delighted by the vivid darkness of Jo’s presentation. Her name is Raissa (Liza Soberano), she’s a bookish kid from a more affluent part of town, and from the moment she and Jo high-five over their shared love of “maximum dismemberment” the two of them are utterly inseparable. Crawford and Mercado blitz through the formative years of their heroines’ friendship in a vibrant blur of crazy misadventures and full-throated karaoke (Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is a recurring motif), all of it set against the backdrop of a day-glo Manila that’s been rendered with the halcyon sweetness of a memory.
It’s all needle-drops and anime speed lines until the girls finish high school and Raissa reveals that she’s low-key going to college halfway around the world at Caltech, a piece of information that very much conflicts with Jo’s life plan for the immediate future (work at a fast food restaurant and be roommates with Raissa forever). Both girls are rattled by the thought of being apart, but a healthy friendship is better sustained by the magic of shared memories than by the fear of being forgotten.
Of course, that can be a tricky thing for a teenager — or a grown-up — to accept. Lucky for these girls, they’re spirited away to Nakalimutan on the eve of Raissa’s departure, and getting back home before the plane takes off will require them to take full advantage of their special bond, and also to make peace with the fact that nothing, not even a memory-eating Ilocano demon voiced by Jenny Slate, could ever undo the time they spent together.
When Jo and Raissa are swallowed through a sand dollar-shaped portal to the magical island from Lola’s stories, the girls are less alarmed by where they are than by when — the sun has come up, Raissa’s flight is just a few hours away, and neither of them have any recollection of the previous night, though judging by the crown on Jo’s head, the demon wings gripping onto Raissa’s shoulders, and the fact that every creature on Nakali seems to know/have some beef with them, it seems like the BFFs had quite a time of things. Getting back home will require them to retrace their steps, meet up with the “Wild Pack” of party monsters they’ve already forgotten along the way (matching tattoos are involved), and find the key to re-opening that portal.
Don’t expect a clear sequence of events as Jo and Raissa work their way toward finding the MacGuffin — “Forgotten Island” moves too fast to explain where it’s going, as Crawford and Mercado’s script would rather emphasize that each of the girls feels differently about getting there. The good news is that Nakali is a fun place for a whirlwind tour, a bright storybook fantasia of cyan and magenta whose forests, temples, and craggy shores are home to an eye-popping ecosystem of mythological creatures (or “Aswang,” as they’re broadly referred to in Filipino folklore). This is Dreamworks, not Studio Ghibli, and so the spirits don’t seem to have their own lives so much as they transparently exist for the benefit of the film’s characters and/or a couple of slaphappy sight gags, but at least your kids will never be in need of something new to look at.
The characters make sure of that. Thematically linked to Jo and Raissa by his own insecurities, Raww — Franco’s giddy weredog — is a shape-shifting loner who’s desperate to hold onto his newfound human friends, even though (or especially because) he can’t even hold onto himself. “Forgotten Island” may not meaningfully follow through on that emotional connection, but Franco lends Raww the perfect mix of cartoon eagerness and vulnerability, and the “spontaneous transformation” concept is a clever way of externalizing how feelings can take on a life of their own.
The other Aswang we meet along the way each reflect Jo and Raissa’s predicament to a more nebulous extent. One of them is a three-eyed, eight-foot-tall, 200-year-old baby named Bungi Tiyanak (voiced by Manny Jacinto) who’s so attached to his mother that she literally needs to sever her umbilical cord in order to join Jo and Raissa’s JRPG party; his arc gestures towards the need to leave home and stand on your own too feet. I’m less sure how the forgettable tree giant Datu (Jo Koy) or the dehydrated Prince Mermahn (Kevin McCann as a shriveled water ghoul who puffs up into a vain merman with too much lip filler and “a photogenic memory” whenever he gets wet) are meant to contour the main characters.
Still, even the most cutified of these creatures — that would be Duwende King Truffle Wuffle, voiced by Ronny Chieng, whose fearsome warrior tribe is betrayed by their adorability — all contribute to the film’s cohesive sense of folklore, and underline the extent to which Filipino culture has been overlooked by Hollywood storytelling, for better or worse.
None of the movie’s creatures are truer to that folklore, or more acutely reflective of Jo and Raissa’s drama, than the villainous Manang, whose ability to split herself in half doesn’t just make for a neat and gnarly effect, but also viscerally illustrates the violence of the girls’ impending separation. That Manang is kept to the shadows for most of the story is typical of today’s mainstream animation, in which villains are little more than malformed ideas made flesh, but at least the heroes in this story feel like people who exist to do more than serve a theme.
Jo and Raissa leap off the screen, even when the movie around them threatens to bury the girls under an avalanche of loud stuff. If the plot of “Forgotten Island” can frequently be too busy in a way that distracts from the purity of its central friendship, the film always holds together — by something more than just centrifugal force — because the bond shared between its co-leads is strong enough to withstand a lot more than that.
Grade: B
Universal Pictures will release “Forgotten Island” in theaters on Friday, September 25.
