Of all the magical portals that transport you to another world, “Forgotten Island” may have the cutest. It’s not a brick tunnel like “Spirited Away” or a hidden door like “Coraline” or even C.S. Lewis’ famous wardrobe. In this movie, it’s a sand dollar.
That humble beach staple is the key to unlocking what surely is the richest, busiest and trippiest animated movie of the year, one that leans into Filipino folklore to tell a story about friendship. Our advice to moviegoers? Pick up the sand dollar.
Written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado — the same team behind “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” — “Forgotten Island” creates a fantastical universe for things like an eight-foot-tall, 200-year-old demon baby with three eyes; an obnoxious, shallow merman with singing nipples and a legion of adorable mushroom warriors. It’s recommended that you not attend this stoned. (Or maybe you should?)
All this is drawn from the mythology of the Philippines, clearly fertile soil that will stun the uninitiated. Pair these creatures with a cinematic style that’s ultra-kinetic — mixing elements of anime and manga, along with 1990s street art, video games and classic Hanna-Barbera — and you get a visually arresting buffet with fart jokes. It makes “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” look as quaint as “Up.”
The plot is established early: Two slightly unhinged schoolgirls — Jo, pure fun-seeking, and Raissa, responsible, determined, maybe too determined — meet after being sent to the principal’s office and realize they both share a fascination with Nakalimutan, the mythical island where all the creatures of Filipino folklore live.
We watch this deep, quirky friendship grow — “You had me at disembowelment,” one says to the other — until a fateful night when the now-young women must part. Raissa’s going to Caltech in America and leaving Jo, a wannabe artist who toils in fast food mascot jobs. “How can a rocket fly with a boulder attached to it?” Raissa’s disapproving mom says to her daughter.
Their friendship — measured by the massive number of charms attached to their friendship bracelets, each one representing a shared adventure — faces its sternest test, and that’s when they find the sand dollar. It sends them to Nakalimutan.
Jo (voiced by the singer-songwriter H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) wake up in this very foreign land with their memories wiped. Raissa weirdly has half her hair shaved off and a pair of wings, while Jo has a strange tattoo and a crown. They have to piece together what happened, like a “Memento” for middle schoolers. Then they have to find a way back home.
The voice cast also includes Jenny Slate as a memory stealing demon, Ronny Chieng as the deliciously named King Truffle Wuffle, Joy Koy as the leader of tree giants, and Lea Salonga as a fearsome vampiric creature with yellow cat eyes who can detach her torso from her lower body. Dave Franco also plays an anxious, bro-ey were-dog whose loyalty isn’t always clear.
“Forgotten Island” is sort of a mess, in the best way. There are jokes about Tom Cruise, Will Smith’s Oscar slap and, weirdly, footage of Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Predator.” It incorporates the Tagalog language, energy drinks and flaming Cheetos, Post-its, a score with indigenous Filipino instruments, boisterous karaoke as well as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart” — twice! It’s a world where “Who Let the Dogs Out” mixes with Filipino pop and a large wooden chicken posing as a Trojan Horse. It can be a lot.
They might be in their mind-blowing childhood paradise, but Jo and Raissa haven’t resolved their adult differences and inevitably fight — “You have a future. I don’t,” says Jo. The final third of the movie is them struggling to recapture their memories, including the ones they’ve built together.
“Forgotten Island” is a movie about forgetting as much as it is about remembering and you’ll likely walk out wanting to text your bestie, asap. Do it. Let a sand dollar reconnect you.
“Forgotten Island,” a DreamWorks Animation release that’s in theaters Friday, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “animated sequences of scary action, language, rude humor, thematic elements, some violence and brief tobacco imagery.” Running time: 95 minutes. Three stars out of four.
