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I see death.

Silent trade in paper!

No, I am the father.

Oh, Rush, right? What's in the box?

You blew it up.

Damn you all.

Hello and welcome to another Slate spoiler special podcast.

I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic,

and here to talk with me today about Pixar's new movie Luca is Karen Hahn, Slate staff writer

and cultureista. How are you doing, Karen? Good. How are you? So nice to see you, I guess,

to peek behind the curtain, we taped Culture Gap Fest this morning. And now about two hours

after we finished doing that, we are chatting again.

Yeah, I don't know if we've ever podcasted twice in a day, and we certainly have never podcasted together twice in a day on the same movie, which is actually something we tried to avoid doing, having these kind of pile-ups in podcasting. But I'm glad we get to talk about this one twice, because since we talked about it, I started rethinking about it, and then I went back and rewashed as much of it as I could fit in between sessions. And I have new thoughts about it that I wouldn't have brought in before, plus some things that I didn't get a chance to say in that segment, because of course it's only 10 minutes and we don't spoil, whereas here we have all the time and ability to spoil that we need. I'm so curious what your new thoughts are. That's so exciting. Okay, well, first of all, I think that I liked it more the second time. I went in without the expectations that it be one of the kind of grand philosophical Pixar epics, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, in the course of this conversation, which it isn't and doesn't try to be and shouldn't try to be, and which I thought the first time as well, but since I went in sort of knowing that its pleasures are on a smaller scale, you could say a more human scale, although this whole movie is about shifting between being human and not. So I think I enjoyed it more, but I also saw more of, I think, my problems in its, it's maybe world building, especially in the second half. And so I have more details about that that we can get into in a bit. First, let's do our go-around. And just let me just quickly ask you, if you liked it and if you would send people to see it, since this is not about reviewing, but about getting into an itty-gritty. I really liked Luca. I thought it was so, so cute and so cute. And I actually did the last time that I called my mom to talk to her, I was like, get on my Disney Plus account and watch Luca. It's so cute and sweet. And I actually did, the last time that I called my mom to talk to her, I was like,

get on my Disney Plus account and watch, Luca. It's so cute and just so easy to watch. It's just 95 minutes. It's not a long movie at all. It's very easy to watch, easy to get in and out of. And it's just very cute. I like it a lot. Highly recommend, especially because it is just on Disney plus or if you're already subscribed, it's not like you're paying that extra like premiere fee to watch it.

Yeah. Actually, that was an interesting marketing choice because this was meant to be a theatrical release at first, right? And I guess because of a combination of the pandemic and piles up, pileups of movies and it being a kid's movie, they just figured that they were going to go this way. but you're right. It's not even a premiere. I don't know what you would call it, but it's not one of those new releases that you briefly have to pay a lot for. So if you've got Disney Plus, I would certainly watch it. And it made me wish that I had little enough kids to watch it with them. Because I think this is, I mean, actually, if you were a teenager who didn't think you were too cool for everything, you would probably love Luca. The problem is getting those kids to see these kind of movies in the first place. But I think for any kid who's sort of 12 or under, this movie is just perfect summertime viewing.

Yeah, to circle back a little bit, if we weren't a pandemic and if things weren't the way that they were, I would love to see this in the theater.

Because I'm sure we'll get into this, but one of the things that I really love about this is all of the detail that they put into the visuals.

It's a really gorgeous film to look at, and it's so fluid and kinetic that the fact that you might only be able to see it on a small screen is kind of a bummer. That said, like many of Pixar's movie, it's not like a kid's movie. It's not like you're only going to enjoy it if you're a child or young teenager. I never once felt like I was being like pander to or talked down to while I was watching this. And I think it hits a good balance in that sense. There isn't too much peril or anything, but they're not trying to candify this story in order for kids to feel more at home with it. That's at least what I thought.

Yeah, that's definitely true. And by saying that I wish I had little kids to watch it with, or littler, I guess I don't mean that it's only a kids movie, but just that, especially on the second watching, it really struck me that it understands the psychology of childhood, in particular in a relationship to the friendship of the two boys, which we'll get into. I think that's the strongest element in the movie and that there are some other relationships and

characters that aren't

...