An underwhelming effort from a company that seems to have fallen behind the curve. Creatively it’s pulling too much from _Zootopia_ and _Inside Out_ while not adding much of its own flavour, almost every choice in this movie is predictable. Sure, the racism/prejudice commentary is more aggressive now that we’ve entered the post-Trump era (seriously, you should go back and look at how _Zootopia_ handled that same topic, it feels quaint now), but besides that it doesn’t bring much to the table. The worldbuilding lacks the clever intricacies of _Zootopia_, the pretty animation style has some unique textures but it’s no _Across the Spider-verse_, and emotionally it feels more like Illumination than Pixar. It’s a very straightforward, cheesy romcom with a formulaic set-up for the main characters (think _Notting Hill, Crazy Rich Asians_, and countless other movies your mom loves), some ok comedy (bad puns notwithstanding) and a boring adventure (fixing pipelines, how exciting). The score’s pretty interesting because it seems to pull a lot from Indian folk music, on the other hand the songs sound generic and overproduced. Overall, I’d easily recommend this over some other animated films from this year, as this does genuinely try as a movie. However, that doesn’t change that I expect both children and adults to be mostly bored by this.

4.5/10