The Family Gala screenings are always a highlight of the Melbourne International Film Festival, this year Universal Pictures and Dreamworks gave us a REALLY early look at their upcoming animated feature Forgotten Island, a brand new original story with a heavily Filipino influence that takes all of the energy from 1980’s film, anime, manga and history, fusing all together in a millenial fever dream about the power of friendship and what happens when those founding friendships shift and life takes us in different directions. It’s an incredibly colourful acid trip that essentially is about two child hood friends who take an unnamed energy drink substance, go out on a wild night out, wake up on the beach the next morning and need to retrieve an important item, the problem is, they cannot remember anything about the previous night and are reliant on their guide (a hilarious dog voiced by Dave Franco) to retrace their chaotic steps to be able to go home.
The story centres around two childhood friends Jo (singer H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) who are growing up together, they are best friends at school, getting each other into (and out of!) trouble, making friendship braclets with charms to remind them of each pivotal moment, all while being guided by Jo’s grandmother Lola (Dolly DeLeon) who regales the girls with tales of Nakali, a supernatural island that used to be local folklore and has now faded into distant memory. The two girls are getting ready to head out to college with Raissa heading to California to go to a tech university and Jo staying behind to work at a fried chicken place. The night before they are to be separated the mysterious island transports the girls into its vortex and they must work together to find a way home.
And it’s that folklore where the film really sings. The island of Nakali is stuffed with creatures and spirits pulled straight out of Filipino mythology, and the animation goes feral in the best possible way – one minute it’s classic DreamWorks sheen, the next it’s channelling 80s and 90s anime with hand-drawn flourishes that make the whole thing feel like a memory you’re not sure actually happened. There’s a montage of the three running through the city running into people who encountered them in a much different state the night before, I couldn’t believe they hot away with this, and I was excited to see more! The voice cast is doing beautiful work too. H.E.R. gives Jo a wonderful mix of stubbornness and self-doubt, Liza Soberano plays Raissa with that quiet ache of someone about to leave home, and Dolly DeLeon is warm and mischievous as Lola. But the scene-stealer is Dave Franco as the guide dog, who gets most of the film’s biggest laughs while somehow never wearing out his welcome. And of course with H.E.R. involved, the music was never going to let the side down – the soundtrack does a lot of the emotional heavy lifting in the back half, and it earns every tear.
What was most surprising, is the film really does have an adult flavour to it, feeling at times like The Hangover meets Bridesmaids, adults will be shocked at how much the filmmakers have gotten away with here, and is a testament to how clever the writers are. It’s a film about friendship, growing up and how we handle change, and it’s all told through a Filipino lens incorporating folklore in a very Moana kind of way.
Forgotten Island is that rare animated feature that trusts its audience, big and small, to handle big feelings wrapped in a chaotic, neon-soaked adventure. Kids will love the dog and the chaos, adults will leave thinking about the friendship bracelet on their own wrist. Universal and DreamWorks gave MIFF audiences an early look, and come September 17, everyone else gets to take the trip.
Forgotten Island is in Australian cinemas September 17.
You can watch our video review below
