(courtesy IMP Awards)
If you are looking for a potent shot of animated joy into your moviegoing veins, then look no further than the vibrantly colourful and emotionally rich world of Swapped.
Overflowing with gobsmackingly wonderful imaginative world-building, the best this reviewer has seen the criminally underrated wonder of Disney’s Strange World, Swapped, from Skydance Animation, dazzles from the moment you hit “PLAY”.
It is so big and epically imaginative, in fact, that it really would have benefited from going big and wide on a quite a few cinema screens where parents, and guncles too, would have loved to take their children, and nieces and nephews to see a film that brims too with a huge unstinting heart.
And it’s that all-encompassing big and overflowing heart that really sends the film towards a spectacularly uplifting finale.
It’s message about seeing life from someone else’s perspectives, and selflessly rising up to assist them even it costs you, is a timely one too in a world full of increasingly social isolation, cratering levels of empathy and an unwillingness to join community groups or professional associations.
Honestly, Swapped has everything and it’s impossible to get to the end of its 102-minute run-time and not feel supremely better about the world which is quite the feat when doomscrolling has sunk many of us to pretty exhausting lows and all we hear about is hatred and water and oppositional fury.
In some ways, of course, the sort of communally-minded uplifting messaging you will find littered across the narrative like a mass of magically transformative pods (more on them later) is pretty common in a lot of animated movies which trade in the much-needed and idealistically rich notion that we are much stronger together than apart.
But there’s something about the way Swapped tackles these well-used themes that it makes feel a breath of fresh air messaging-wise and that could have a lot to do with how exuberantly it attacks the themes of the films without once feeling exhaustingly heavy-handed or tiringly polemic.
Much of that exuberance comes from the two lead characters, a Pookoo (think a squirrely chipmunky kind of small cute furry animal) named Ollie (Michael B. Jordan) and Ivy, voiced by Juno Temple, a plant-bird hybrid known as a Javan who do not like each other.
AT ALL.
Their species at a loggerheads in a valley that was once a verdant paradise, thanks to giant walking forest and rock creatures known as Dzo who used sparklingly bright purple pods to change the creatures of the valley into each other for a time so that they would know what it was like to be someone other than themselves.
This magically real body swapping bred a community of animal-plant and bird-plant hybrids who existed in perfect harmony, not because they were part of some peace, love and mung beans cult but because they genuinely understood and cared about the concerns of beings with whom they might otherwise have had no meaningful connection.
It was quite magical but after one particular creature, who features prominently in the plot but whose existence and actions are deep within spoiler territory, ruins everything, the Dzo leave and we end up with the dog-eat-dog, or is that Treewolf-eats-Pookoo-and-Javan world in which Ollie and Ivy end up first up as adversaries and then after some unexpected, Freaky Friday-level body-swapping via some left behind magic pods, as situationally necessary, and then actual, friends.
While you know their initial antagonism will happily morph into deep friendship and understanding, Swapped has a lot of fun getting them to that point, gifting us with snappy, funny dialogue, fully-realised characters and some slapstick brilliance which more than matches the smart, zingy writing.
It’s a good thing that Ollie and Ivy do become bestest friends because Swapped continually turns the tables on them, with some characters not who they appear to be, possible solutions not panning out as expected and the story not always travelling the expected route, or at least, not as a big quest-film like would not accomplish the task.
Swapped is a blockbuster in the truest sense of the world and if you watched the trailer, you will know that the two have to pull together, and intensely, quickly and fully too, if they are to avert a disaster of valley-destroying proportions.
As animated rides go, Swapped is an absolute joy.
It takes the fantastically impressive world-building which grows and develops and makes sense whichever way you look at it, and fills it with fully-formed characters you care for, situations which call for everyone, especially the two protagonists to set aside past antipathy and work selflessly to each other’s, and the wider community’s, benefit, and an ending which absolutely captures your heart without once feeling emotionally manipulative.
Crucially, it packs in a lot without ever feeling overstuffed or overdone, every narrative beat and vivacious piece of animated storytelling feeling it belongs and pulls its weight.
Swapped is a Pixar-level type animated film which takes well-worn tropes, cliches and messaging and makes them feel fresh, vital and entirely welcome, meaning that if you watch a lot of animated films, you will immediately know what you’re in for in one sense but entirely not in another, and what a surprising joy it is to find something wholly and deliciously original.
While it’s tempting to hit the “10 second” button when you’re watching something on a streaming platform, especially when the story lags or there’s a sense of copious amounts of narrative filler, you never have that issue with Swapped which uses every second of its running time to maximum, deeply pleasing effect.
And that effect, as needed, is a hugely uplifting one with Swapped serving up all kinds of dire issues and problems to be solved, but ultimately landing in a place where hope abounds, community prevails over selfishly narrow survival and creatures great and soul pulling together in a way that warms the heart, restores your faith in “humanity” (presented in richly imaginative alternate form) and makes you feel like a mutually beneficial future isn’t simply possible but achievable if we’ll just give it a chance (and perhaps find a magic pod or two).