Onward Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

2. The Central Gimmick Feels Like A Missed Opportunity

The idea of a Weekend at Bernie's-inspired Pixar movie sounds absolutely hilarious on paper, but as much as Onward's marketing has focused on the gimmick of the brothers bringing the disembodied legs of their father on their journey, it's ultimately a fairly tepid element of the story.

The legs are almost always there, yes, but given the obvious potential to shape the film's humour and set-pieces around them, playing-up the physically expressive potential of a pair of legs for big laughs, they're often just...there.

Bringing character to a pair of legs is obviously a massive creative challenge, but not one Pixar's previous work would suggest they were beyond.

And yet, we don't really get much sense of who Ian and Barley's dad was, and the limbs mostly end up feeling like a marketing ploy rather than a genuine entity in their own right.