The One and Only Ivan serves up a fairly large helping of heartfelt family fun. Let’s just get one thing out of the way - this is for kids. The overall tone is incredibly light, with a lot of the “heavier” themes (the ones about freedom and captivity specifically) toned way down. The humour is also eyerolling-ly juvenile at times, but luckily there’s not a lot of it. You see, the majority of the film falls under the “sentimental drama” umbrella, with plenty of heartstring-tugging instances to go around. The voice cast is admittedly enjoyable though, with Sam Rockwell and Danny DeVito especially making for a scene stealing pair. Meanwhile, Bryan Cranston gets pretty goofy at times as one of the live action actors (meh, it looks like he was having fun). The CGI work is also notable here, as the animal’s mouth movements seemed to be an improvement over the ones seen in last year’s Lion King (just me?). So, while not as “deep” as the story could have taken it, this will surely give the preteen audience some genuine quality entertainment (something fairly lacking these days). So, for that, we say thank you Ivan!