Ambitious Animation Upends What a Kids Movie Can Be

November 15, 2025

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To watch Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco is to be thrown back to a time when children’s movies weren’t just an onslaught of the same thing over and over again. Arco is a film that is comfortable just being itself, sidestepping any overexplanation and instead instantly throwing you into a futuristic world that’s as deceptively simple in design as it is genuinely ambitious.

The tagline “What if rainbows were people from the future traveling in time?” reveals what little of the premise one needs to know when stepping in, but there’s more to it than that. In a future where everyone lives in elevated homes in the clouds due to the steady destruction of the planet, individuals can time travel via colorful coats that create rainbow arcs. Arco, a 12-year-old boy who steals his sister’s coat to take his first flight, borne of impatience, ends up getting lost in time and traveling from 2932 to 2075.

In this “past” – a fascinating blend of traditional suburbia and a technologically advanced society, in which children are essentially raised by subservient robots both at home and publicly – Arco meets a young woman named Iris who dreams of life outside her enclosed home. Her parents are always away (in their place is a robot that cares for her and her younger sibling) and Arco’s presence upends whatever semblance of depressing stability she is accustomed to. From there, the film evolves into a miniature adventure of sorts, with Iris helping Arco get back home while trying to escape the mundanity of her existence at the same time.

From the get-go, the influence of decades of Japanese animation on Arco is undeniable; everything from the technical childlike worldbuilding of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy to the style, narrative, and thematic explorations of Hayao Miyazaki’s work are on display. Arco makes for beautiful viewing because of the way Bienvenu tries to imitate these works while also presenting his own version of a fairy tale. On a purely stylistic level, it’s a rare film that seems to put true effort into every bit of its design, especially in the incredibly detailed and largely naturalistic backgrounds that these characters move through. Key to the film’s themes and aesthetics are the immense natural spaces contrasted by a variety of technological advances that are equally gorgeous in presentation even when there are robots flooding the screen.

Neon

Much like Miyazaki’s work – as well as a number of American animators who have incorporated anxieties about the ways we are steadily destroying this world for those who will live on after us – the tension between tech and nature is built into Arco’s story. That it never feels nearly as preachy as contemporary films that tackle similar subject matter is due to its patient pacing and relative lack of having characters talk down to their audience. It’s refreshing to experience a film that doesn’t condescend, rely on immature gags, or even pretend to have some great commentary on the emotional states of children (we must retire the “realistic panic attack in kids movies” routine).

Perhaps there’s an excess of fondness for a film like this, one that’s able to express universal anxieties in a lovely package, in a contemporary age when so much of children’s animation has been overtaken by heavy-handed messaging, but Arco is also just an engaging movie. The characters are abundant and personable, whether that’s the committed robot Mikki (whose voice is a combination of both of Iris’ parents) or the trio of goofy brothers that go from potential villains to becoming part of the gang in order to discover whether fantasy is reality. There is also a weight to the protagonists and their journeys, with Arco’s choice having real repercussions and Iris’ isolation and ambition being core to the narrative. That Arco and Iris (whose names, when put together as “arcoiris,” actually means “rainbow” in Spanish) have actual stakes in spite of any time travel logic in the film means it isn’t just fluff.

So much of what makes Arco special comes from the way it manages to be everything a good children’s movie should be while also feeling like a fairly classical fairy tale of sorts. References to Peter Pan aren’t surprising, with the film being just as playful and adventurous despite its relatively smaller scope. Bienvenu makes room for as many moments of introspection as he does spectacle, with the latter being best exemplified by a few chase scenes, attempts at flying, and an inventive (albeit underused) setpiece in which every room in the children’s school becomes a massive living diorama for these characters to run through.

A well-cast collection of actors – Romy Fay, Juliano Krue Valdi, Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Andy Samberg, Flea, and America Ferrera – lead Arco’s English dub (as opposed to its French original), with their performances not only matching what the images and characters are presenting but resulting in an appealing entry point for young English-speaking audiences. Its maturity also makes it easy for adults to fall into its beauty, even if they may find themselves noticing the many influences that it borrows from. Regardless, or maybe because of that, Arco is an animated film that feels unique in how it approaches the typical coming of age tales we all grew up with and does so with actual skill in the realm of animation.