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The worst thing about Forgotten Island might be its name. It’s generic, forgettable, and could be easily mistaken for a cheap sequel to Forbidden Planet. In other words, it’s everything that Forgotten Island, DreamWorks’ bombastic, brilliant new animated film, is not.
Forgotten Island comes from the Puss in Boots: The Last Wish team Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, who write and direct the Philippines-based fantasy adventure. And like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Forgotten Island is one of the most visually inspired and surprisingly profound animated movies this side of Into the Spider-Verse. Which is why it’s a bit of a shame that it’s getting released without much fanfare by Universal; in a better world, this would be this year’s KPop Demon Hunters.
Forgotten Island follows best friends Jo (voiced by H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), as they grow up together in the ‘90s in the Philippines, bonded by their passionate belief in the mythical island of Nakali, which is inhabited by all kinds of mystical residents, including the dreaded vampiric Manananggal. Jo’s grandmother Lola (Dolly de Leon) even visited the island as a young girl, and regales the friends with tales of her time on the island. Jo and Raissa share a lifetime of memories — shown in a handy, zippy montage — in their friendship bracelets, attaching a new charm every time something special happens. But time, as always, changes everything: Lola passes away and leaves Jo an orphan, while Raissa becomes a science prodigy who gets accepted to Caltech. Despondent that Raissa will leave her behind, Jo brings her out for one last hang by the beach, where she discovers a glowing sand dollar that activates a portal to Nakali. Eager to finally achieve their dream of finding Nakali, she persuades Raissa to jump in with her — she’ll have plenty of time to catch her flight to the U.S. the next day.
However, they wake on the beach of Nakali the next morning, having apparently had a wild night…with no memory of what happened. With the help of a were-dog named Raww (Dave Franco), they retrace the steps of their legendary night in Nakali, while evading the creepy enticements of memory demon Batiba (Jenny Slate) and the terrifying attacks of the vengeful Manang (Lea Salonga).
Forgotten Island is packed to the gills with stuff — characters, plot, tones, colors. To call it kaleidoscopic may be doing it a disservice. If Puss in Boots: The Last Wish had taken the Spider-Verse-inspired 2D/3D animation to new levels, Forgotten Island takes it to a new realm altogether. It’s even flashier and more relentlessly paced than its other animated contemporaries — in fact, the closest equivalent pacing-wise might be the Wachowski’s infamously anarchic Speed Racer — and it leaves you just as exhausted and harried as its kinda-hungover protagonists.
The film leans heavily into its ‘90s setting, taking inspiration from cartoons of the time, from Street Fighter to Sailor Moon, and even cutting to 2D-animated interludes in these shows’ styles for various flashbacks. The whole film is a raucous celebration of growing up in the Philippines in the ‘90s, and it’s bursting at the seams with its love for that culture, with many sequences featuring allusions to karaoke, food, and music (several sequences play out like full-fledged music videos), as well the story’s obvious roots in Filipino mythology.
But just as Forgotten Island threatens to overwhelm with its many sidequests and many jokey side characters (Manny Jacinto as a giant Tiyanak baby demon, and Kevin McCann as Mermahn are the particular standouts), it pulls itself back to its emotional core: the friendship between Jo and Raissa.
The pair’s friendship, already threatened by Raissa’s looming departure to the U.S. and Jo’s arrested development, gets tested on this journey, building to a devastating breaking point. The wild, free-wheeling Jo, wanting her friend to stay forever, keeps encouraging detours, while the straight-laced Raissa blames Jo for getting them in this situation. Meanwhile, the clock ticks on her flight’s departure to the U.S., as the duo searches for a way back home.
Forgotten Island is an “everything but the kitchen sink” kind of movie that shouldn’t work — it’s chaotic, it’s frenetic, it’s kitschy, it’s got way too much Dave Franco being an obnoxious bro — but it miraculously does. It’s easily one of the most innovative animated movies of this decade, not to mention one of the explosively colorful. And it’s got that sweet, emotional core of a friendship through the decades, giving it an earnest pathos that elevates it above its animated contemporaries.