Nimona Review: A Beautiful Combination of Funny and Heartfelt

Nimona review: a shapeshifter, a knight and a world that never explains itself

Nimona is a movie that arrived the hard way. The project began at Blue Sky Studios, survived the Disney takeover of Fox, and looked finished when Disney announced the closure of Blue Sky in February 2021. Annapurna Pictures revived it in 2022, with DNEG Animation making the picture and Netflix releasing it on June 30, 2023. The film had already screened at the Annecy festival on June 14. Anyone searching for a Nimona review is usually asking one thing: after all those delays, is it any good? It is, and the best proof is how little of the production history shows on screen.

The setting is the first pleasure. A medieval kingdom of knights, queens and dragons shares the frame with cell phones, laser sights and television news crews. The film never pauses to justify the mix. A walled city, an Institute that governs it, and a legend about a monster-slaying hero all sit comfortably next to hovering gadgets. The shrug it gives to the question of how any of this works is the film's first joke, and its first statement about the story's real subject, which is the sorting of people into neat categories that do not fit them.

Nimona herself arrives uninvited. She is a teenager with red hair, a pair of pointed teeth and an unstoppable mouth, and she announces that she is going to be the sidekick of Ballister Boldheart, the most hated man in the kingdom. Ballister, a former knight framed for a murder, insists he is not a villain, murder wall notwithstanding. Their partnership turns into a mystery that pits them against Ballister's former partner and love, Ambrosius Goldenloin, and against the Director who runs the Institute.

The story is adapted from ND Stevenson's 2015 graphic novel, and the film changes a great deal of its plot. Even so, it keeps what made the book work: a character who treats shapeshifting as a punchline and then, slowly, as a wound. The screenplay by Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor is lean and moves quickly through a plot that is simple on purpose, because the real business is the friendship in the middle.

One thread deserves its own mention. Nimona likes to throw up the horns and growl "Metal," yet her temperament runs closer to punk, and the soundtrack follows her lead. Her whole attitude, loud and contrary and allergic to rules, is the film's answer to a kingdom that has built walls to keep out anything it cannot name. The film resists the binary in its worldbuilding, in its hero and in its jokes, and that consistency gives the comedy a purpose.

Chloë Grace Moretz and Riz Ahmed

Moretz plays Nimona at a frantic pitch that could grate in lesser hands. It does not, because the performance is precisely controlled. The energy recalls Robin Williams's improvisational Genie, tuned for scripted lines, and the film lets her be silly for an hour before it lets her be vulnerable. When Nimona's backstory arrives in a nearly wordless sequence scored with a choral piece by composer Christophe Beck, the effect lands because the earlier comedy has made her real.

Riz Ahmed is the film's straight man, and it is a pleasure to hear him in this register. Ballister is dry and wounded, and Ahmed finds laughs in the way he starts to pick up Nimona's phrasing. The platonic bond between them is the emotional spine. A film for young viewers that treats a friendship between a man and a girl as complete in itself, with no romance waiting at the end, is rarer than it should be.

Eugene Lee Yang gives Ambrosius more depth than the role first suggests. He is the descendant of the kingdom's founding hero and is trying to live up to a statue. The film also gives him an openly romantic relationship with Ballister, shown in the first minutes with touching hands, a declaration of love and a kiss, which is handled as an ordinary fact of the world. Frances Conroy voices the Director, whose design is the most severe in the film, all sharp angles and cold authority, a visual opposite of Nimona's rounded, ever-changing outline.

Animation and direction

Directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, who made Spies in Disguise, give the picture a looseness that mainstream animation often lacks. The camera zooms through the city and the action scenes are built to be fun. The film is not Spider-Verse and does not pretend to be, but it has a personality of its own that sets it apart from the house styles associated with Pixar and Illumination.

The look takes a little getting used to. Early on the characters can seem placed in front of their surroundings instead of inside them, and the CG feels a step removed. That impression fades as the film goes on. Nimona's transformations into pink animals are fluid and funny, and a sequence in which she escapes a castle by cycling through creatures is among the best shapeshifting set pieces in recent animation. Her design is also notable: she is a heavier, sturdier figure than the ultra-thin character types animation often defaults to.

The comparison that comes to mind is Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which also staged a shapeshifter's castle escape. Nimona's version is faster and more emotional, because the creature changing shape is the one the audience is rooting for, and every disguise is also a flinch away from being seen.

A children's film that goes somewhere dark

The final act is darker and rawer than the early jokes suggest. The villain plot is secondary to the themes of prejudice and control that run through both leads, and the script is smart enough to let the twists be predictable while the emotional test of Nimona and Ballister's bond carries the weight. The film is not saying anything that earlier family movies have not said about outsiders. It says it with enough conviction and craft that it feels new.

Nimona: key credits at a glance

• Release: streaming on Netflix from June 30, 2023, after a first screening at Annecy on June 14.
• Directors: Nick Bruno and Troy Quane.
• Screenplay: Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor, from the graphic novel by ND Stevenson.
• Voices: Chloë Grace Moretz (Nimona), Riz Ahmed (Ballister Boldheart), Eugene Lee Yang (Ambrosius Goldenloin), Frances Conroy (the Director).
• Music: Christophe Beck.
• Awards: nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Nimona verdict: funny, fast and genuinely affecting

As a piece of entertainment, Nimona is one of the most purely enjoyable animated films of its year, and its emotional range is wider than most. The jokes are good enough that the film would work as a comedy alone, and the visual gags, from the shapeshifting to the mismatched medieval and modern props, reward a second viewing. The tears arrive because the film has earned them, and because it trusts its audience, including its youngest viewers, to follow a story about being called a monster by people who are afraid of what they do not understand.

The film's release on the last day of Pride Month gave it extra resonance, and the openly queer central relationship is part of why many viewers embraced it. It would be a mistake to treat that as its only strength. The picture succeeds on craft: tight structure, a lead performance that is both loud and tender, and an animation style willing to look different.

A fair Nimona review has to list the complaints too. The plot is lean to the point of familiarity, and the supporting kingdom politics are thinner than the central pair. Viewers who know the graphic novel will see how much was cut and rearranged. Still, the result is a stand-alone story with enough warmth that a sequel would be welcome. For most households, this is a pick for the next family night, and an easy recommendation for adults who think they have outgrown animated features.

One last thing to know before pressing play: the film asks for patience with its first ten minutes of rapid worldbuilding and rewards it generously. Viewers who bounce off the opening tone are the ones most likely to miss the turn in the middle, where the jokes thin out and the stakes arrive. Stay for that turn. It is the reason the film stays in the memory after the credits, and the reason it deserved the second life that Annapurna and Netflix gave it.

Sources

• Nimona (film), Wikipedia — voice cast, crew and release date