(courtesy IMP Awards)
It’s a rare thing indeed to walk away from a movie, any movie, glorying in how absolutely perfect it is.
There’s always an imperfection somewhere, a moment, however fleeting where you think the narrative baton was dropped or some dialogue jarred a little too much, and while you shrug it off because what is perfect in our world, you’re left wondering just how perfectly unblemished it could have been.
Happily that moment never arrives in Nimona, based on the 2015 graphic novel of the same name by ND Stevenson, and as a result you spend 99 minutes cosily wrapped up in, with a huge smile plastered across your “This is so GOOD!” face, an animated gem that is emotionally incisive with snappy dialogue, ebullient characterisation, inclusively queer sensibilities that celebrates difference as it rails, justifiably against mindless bigotry, and a gloriously expressive sense of what is possible when you go all out and don’t stop to question if you should.
Nimona is anarchically meaningful, going in a million epic directions all at once and yet never at the expense of intimately expressive storytelling, a tension of such adroitly delivered precision that there’s never a second where you think all the pedal to the metal wheels are going to come screaming off and hit a giant pink rhino in the shout (this will make sense later and your heart will laugh and be glad).
Much of that freewheeling chaotic spirit can be sheeted home to the titular shapeshifting character, voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz, who arrives in the life of commoner-turned-almost-knight Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) with a bull in a china shop energy(“Metal!”) that stands in stark contrast to the misery of his once perfect life turned upside down.
She is there because she thinks Ballister is a villain of the darkest kind, a man fresh from killing the queen who plucked him from non-aristocratic obscurity, who, thanks to the retro-medieval-futuristic kingdom in which they live, where flying cars sits cheek-by-jowl with traditional ye olde garb, has his apparently evil deed broadcast to the world.
In a kingdom steeped in the ancient tales of legendary heroine Gloreth (Karen Ryan) banishing a monster so horrifically evil that no grey-tinged, nuanced view of them is possible, Ballister is unquestionably, unequivocally BAD.
So black and white is the prograndistic morality of the kingdom that no one pauses to wonder if he might actually be really guilty or not; he just is and everyone, including his boyfriend and the great love of his life, Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), who wins the title for best-named movie character of the year so far, treat him as such, making him an outcast in a gilded world that is as set in its moralistically myopic ways as the city is constrained by the terrifyingly thick wall that surrounds it and outside of which no one ever dares step.
In one highly televised move, Ballister becomes persona non grata, a shock to him but sadly familiar to Nimona who, thanks to her shapeshifting abilities has only ever been seen as a monster, resulting in a character who acts in contravention of health social norms because that’s the only paradigm left open to her by blinkered, closeminded moralists.
In truth, she is not the being that gossip, assumption and prejudice has made her out to be, and as Nimona progresses in colours eye-popping and writing comedically rich and acrobatic, not only does Ballister comes to appreciate how real and grounded Nimona actually is but the whole kingdom in ways that will make your heart pop with effervescent joy.
That Nimona manages to deliver an emotional wallop of epic proportions, and there are dark and sorrowful times indeed in amongst the glee and sharply witty frivolity, and yet is still able to be its madcap, wildly hilarious narrative propulsive self, is nothing short of magnificent, a heartrending, side-busting mix of humour and heart that never once feels like its tipping too far one way or the other.
In fact, every single scene, every emotional sensibility feels like it belongs right where it is, and you’re hard-pressed to think of any moment in Nimona where it put a foot of any kind wrong.
It effortlessly swings between deeply introspective moments where Nimona in particular questions why she is alive at all to visually slapsticky scenes where she effortlessly changes from one animal to another and dialogue so elegantly and hilariously cast that even in the middle of a high-stakes chase scene, you’ll be laughing about one palace guard talking to the other, quire earnestly, about the difference between river and sea otters.
It gets away with putting outrageously silly wordplay and right-to-the-heart hits of the most intense, existentially ruminative right in the same scene and does with so much heart-pleasing chutzpah that the messaging when it comes along feels organically vital in a way many well-intentioned animated films never quite fulsomely manage.
And the messaging is there plain as day and in your face but in a way that feels earned and honest and never shoved down your throat, yet more evidence of the high calibre of writing brought to the film by Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor whose work is brought to seamlessly imaginative and often deeply moving life by the inspired hands of directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane.
It’s an unalloyed joy to walk away from watching a film that has such a strong sense of self and knows not only what it wants to say, and if you’ve been on the margins or treated as lesser than because of who you are you will find much with which to identify in Nimona, but exactly how it wants to say it, combining vibrantly realised animation that zips and gallops along with a devil-may-care vivacity, witty wordplay that makes you heart sing with comedic delight and some immensely affecting moments that acknowledge how dark life can be and the crulty people can bring to bear on it, but also how light and releasing it can be to be known, to be connected and to be loved and to finally find your people and your home.