This movie is pretty fast paced. The characters are always trying to get out of some kind of mess they created, so in other words you're never bored. I recommend you watch this film with your siblings. I'm a grown man and this film had me tearing up lol. Another great film by Pixar.

Onward unfortunately feels more like backward in Pixar's new film all about wizards and old magic which fails to cast a decent spell.

It would be easy to start to compare Onward against Pixar's other amazing films, so I am going to avoid that and talk solely about this film as a standalone effort...and it certainly feels like an effort watching it.

Set in a fantasy world which once knew magic, Tom Holland plays Ian Light foot, an elf boy turning 16 years old. He's a bit of a sap with no real get up and go about him. Chris Pratt voices his Barley, his older brother who spends most of his time playing Dungeons and Dragons type fantasy games which he believes are all based on the reality of a time before the world settled into using technology rather than the ancient magic of the land.

On his 16th birthday, Ian is presented with a gift his dead dad (it's not a Disney film without a dead parent) left for him. It's his old wizard's staff, and Ian and Barley are given a spell to bring him back to life for just one day. Barley has vague memories of his Dad but Ian, having never met him is keen to see him. They attempt the spell but it goes wrong and only the legs come back, leaving the boys with a dilemma. Do they just have their dad's legs for 24 hours or go on a quest to find a new crystal which will help them complete the spell and see their dad.... Spoiler alert... They go on the quest.

And from there, the whole film kinda fizzles out.

Pixar have always found the perfect balance between kids and adults for me, but whilst watching this I couldn't help but think that nothing in there was pitched at me as an adult, yet too much was aimed over the heads of kids... So just what is the audience for this film?

It's not particularly funny, and underwhelmed me so much after seeing a trailer which really made me think this was going to be an emotional roller-coaster of a film, but in the end it lacked heart and definitely lacked laughs.

Side characters fail to add much to the story. Octavia Spencer's "The Manticore" is a slight uplift in the story as a beast who has now mellowed and is running a themed family restaurant instead of getting involved in Quests.

But that's it.

I think kids will enjoy the fantasy behind it all, but it's just a long way from being a great film for me.

Story was bad, rushed and overall not that good. The main character is really annoying and unrealistically cringey. The plot was also for forced and coincidental.