There’s a late summer release to Disney’s third-generation children’s movie The One and Only Ivan, one of their rare live-action offerings that is not yet an unnecessary remake of an animated hit. It’s a true story that inspired a love novel that in turn, in short, was added to a hot property in Hollywood with Mike Newell directing a script by the excellent Mike White and Angelina Jolie who signed on as producer and star. But a long way ahead lay ahead and six years after the rights were overturned, the end product now draws in view of Disney +, a theatrical release canceled due to the ongoing pandemic.
Though on reflection, it’s a merciful transition, a reasonably enough adventure on the small screen that would have felt stranded on anything bigger. It’s not that it per se looks cheap, far from it, there’s just something hasty and unremarkable about it, a second-hand quickie that has the ingredients to die for, but it can not completely manipulate in a way that it takes it off the ground. The story focuses on a silverback gorilla named Ivan (voiced by Sam Rockwell) who is raised by Mack (Bryan Cranston) as a son, but as Ivan ages he becomes too big to keep at home and so he is moved to Mack’s mall circus as a main attraction. Years later, where we first meet him, he’s fed up with his routine even though the business is booming. When a baby elephant is brought on board, Ivan is reminded of the desert he is quietly missing and so a plan is hatched.
One of the biggest problems with many of Disney’s live action, or at least part-live action, remakes of its animated features is that the studio has taken bright stories and expanded them beyond what is necessary. Take Cinderella (74 minutes to 106) or Dumbo (64 minutes to 112), both inflated misunderstandings that struggle to make their way to an adult length. Strikingly, the opposite is true here as in a fast 94 minutes, White running through events at such a speed that we barely have time to take a breath and instead feel like we are being dragged away with the magic of everything, we are left wondering what was left on the cutting edge. Because so many connecting scenes are missing and so many characters are underdeveloped that one begins to wonder how torturous the post-production process may have been, was a fairly characterless film that seemed more like being collected by commission instead of unfavorable characters. It’s disappointing to see White’s great ability as a comic writer (from The Good Girl to Enlightened to School of Rock) and a strange choice for award-winning theater director Thea Sharrock, who never really finds a way to look like the film on more than production line Disney content.
A reliable ace is Sharrock’s well-chosen cast, a reminder of Disney’s ability to search above star quality to find distinctive, well-matched voices. The set-up may be stronger than usual here, but each actor brings character to their respective animal from Jolie’s older elephant to Danny DeVito’s stray dog to Helen Mirren’s spoiled poodle and to big names who are voiced for their status instead of suitability (Sconer’s Sconer is the most irregular example), it’s refreshing to see a finer balance. There are also some solid effects that work with the animals, but the previously mentioned rush means that emotional beats do not get the space to actually land, and although Ivan’s face may be impressive in a way, he did not given enough of a character (his ability to paint, pushed forward to ads, is at best a subplot) to drag our heartstrings ever successfully. His stupid, uncertain father-son relationship with Cranston is also pretty low, the knotty morals of how the two really see each other have never flown enough.
there are some interesting, briefly placed ideas about captivity and the psychology of animals that depend on humans, which they also stand still, but as with so much of the film, they disappear quickly, silently with a dogfight. Rather than a heart-warming favorite-in-making, The One and Only Ivan is just a vaguely-looking cookie cutter barber smashed together by people who need to know how to make something sweeter and more substantial, a fun attraction for uniscerning young children and a huge waste for every parent.
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