Ana and Bruno (2018)
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Ana and Bruno Movie Review
Ana and Bruno is a 2018 Mexican animated film directed by Carlos Carrera. It’s a solid and very authentic, but problematic in tone movie.
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“Bruno, I have to save my father“
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This is one very crazy movie as its story is unbelievably dark and edgy for a family flick. It portrays creatures who scare people who are then thought to be crazy so they end up in a mental hospital. I particularly liked that edgy horror aspect to it and at first I was taken aback pleasantly by it. I really appreciated the movie’s originality as I haven’t seen an animated film quite like this one before.
But unfortunately it ended up being way too polarizing in its tone to make a bigger impact. The movie is dark and creepy for children, but never particularly effective for parents as it becomes childish at times and overly family-friendly. So at the end of the day they tried to make a film for everyone, but failed miserably as the movie has an unpleasant dual personality to it and it’s never quite aware who it wants to please.
I did like the film’s characters to a degree. The main relationship between the titular characters really works and I liked them together quite a bit, but individually they aren’t all that well defined. The other characters serve their purpose and are positively weird, but not particularly well developed either.
The main problem Ana and Bruno has is its animation. I appreciate this Mexican production for taking risks and genuinely making a solid animated feature, but still the animation is bad even for foreign film standards. It looks very dated with okay designs, but a very unpolished feel to it. It looked like it came in the year 2000 or something and the film just never recovered from that.
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But the pacing is solid, the emotion is definitely there and the dialogue and especially the themes are surprisingly sophisticated for a family animated flick. I liked the film’s story overall and how mature its themes are, but the tone is so off-puttingly uneven that the film never felt like a coherent whole unfortunately.
Ana and Bruno is intriguingly plotted and quite authentic in its weird, thematically rich and interesting storyline. I also found the dialogue solid, the character interactions fine and the emotional investment is strong. But the animation is very dated and the movie unfortunately never felt like a coherent whole owing to its uneven tone that tried to please both adults and children, but ended up being too safe for the former and too scary for the latter.
