When I saw that this was an A24 film, I had fairly high hopes for The Legend Of Ochi. Unfortunately, something just didn’t click for me.
I appreciate that movies made for kids these days also tend to have a slant for the adults. After all, who do you think is taking the children to the movie theater? You want to pitch to every audience you can get. But when you swing for the fences, you really have to get the ball to hit the bat and not just bunt.
The Legend Of Ochi is about a young and quiet girl named Yuri who lives in a remote area in which their livestock are being slaughtered. Yuri’s father, Maxim, says that it is the Ochi, a wild group of creatures who live together in the trees. Having recruited a bunch of boys from the village at the encouragement of their parents, Maxim sets out to slaughter the Ochi with this band of gun-toting wild boys. When Yuri happens upon a small injured Ochi, she befriends him and attempts to get him to safety and, ultimately, back to his family.
I wanted to like this film. It has all the makings of a fun fantasy for the whole family, but it never quite felt like it knew what it wanted to be. Sometimes it was very serious. Sometimes it seemed to be trying to make a point. Sometimes it was silly, and other times it was slow as molasses.
The movie touched various subjects, but only for seconds at a time. The battle between science and religion; parents abandoning their children; children standing up for themselves; bad examples having to witness what they’ve created – SO MANY moments that could have gone somewhere and then got lost to whatever narrative they were trying to go for in a new sequence.
There were a few chuckle-worthy scenarios and/or lines of dialogue and also some beautiful cinematography in the film. The scenic shots in particular are stunning. The budding relationship between Yuri and the baby Ochi is also engaging for a little while, but even it started to drag as time went on and the plotlines got looser.
A few of the specific ideas that they tried were cute or interesting and could have worked, but didn’t. There is a pattern of communication that Yuri develops with baby Ochi, but what starts as a fun sequence, 10 minutes later is nothing special. Maxim mentions that his wife died and never gave him a son, but the fact that Yuri is a girl (or not a boy) is essentially never mentioned again. There is a funky little sequence that takes place in a grocery store that is one of the most entertaining in the entire movie, but when it’s over, so is everything that it brought to the story.
In the end, I found this an interesting concept, but boring, beautiful to look at, but unengaging. It had such potential, it just never figured out what it wanted to be. And, in the end, even Willem Dafoe couldn’t save it for me.
Runtime: 95 minutes
Motion Picture Rating: PG
Languages Spoken In The Film: English and Ochi language with English subtitles
Should You Watch It? Only if you have a child or loved one who really wants to
I appreciate that movies made for kids these days also tend to have a slant for the adults. After all, who do you think is taking the children to the movie theater? You want to pitch to every audience you can get. But when you swing for the fences, you really have to get the ball to hit the bat and not just bunt.
