THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN – “Serves up a fairly large helping of heartfelt family fun”

Ivan

RATING

DIRECTOR

Thea Sharrock (Me Before You – 2016)

STARRING

  • Bryan Cranston as Mack
  • Ramón Rodríguez as George
  • Ariana Greenblatt as Julia
  • Sam Rockwell as Ivan
  • Angelina Jolie as Stella, an African elephant
  • Danny DeVito as Bob, a stray dog
  • Helen Mirren as Snickers, a poodle
  • Brooklynn Prince as Ruby, a baby African elephant

SYNOPSIS

Is based on the 2012 children's novel of the same name by K. A. Applegate.

A gorilla named Ivan lives in a cage at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade with an aging elephant named Stella and a dog named Bob, all with no recollection of how they got there. When an abused baby elephant named Ruby shows up, Ivan starts to care for her and along with the janitor's daughter Julia, they help to turn things around at the mall.

REVIEW SUMMARY

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!

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