Over the Moon Movie Review: Loved the Intent, Hated the Execution
Over the Moon is a Netflix animated, musical movie about a young Chinese girl’s love for her family and her journey towards moving on from tragedy. It shares an awesome cultural lesson about the Chinese moon goddess, Chang’e, and how her legend inspired the moon festival. I thought this movie started out really strong - I found myself tearing up at a scene towards the opening. As much as the opening gave me hope that this would be an awesome movie, my enthusiasm died by the midpoint, because honestly, I think the songs are kind of awful. There might be a few exceptions here and there, but for the most part, a lot of it felt cringe-y to me. Overall, I felt like this film was kind of boring and a lot of things felt really under-explained. Spoiler Alert ahead for some of the other things that really bored me about this film.
Once the story reaches the point where Fei Fei goes to outer space and meets Chang’e, it takes a turn for the worse. The best parts of the film were the family bonding moments and getting to explore Fei Fei’s neighborhood. I hated the outer space sequences because it was really random and a lot of things were unexplained. For instance, why is Chang’e a pop icon and where did all of those weird creatures come from? Don’t even get me started with the music - when the rap song started during the ping pong scene, I almost wanted to quit watching. That song was so awkward and unnecessary - are the filmmakers just trying to be “hip” and show that they can create fun rap songs because Philippa Soo was in Hamilton? I really loved Philippa Soo’s voice acting by the way, even though it was being used to sing some horrendous and not very inspiring lyrics. I think the story recovers a little bit towards the end, when the outer space scenes are over. I also feel like the little space dog, voiced by Ken Jeong, was meant to be a tear-jerker kind of character that the audience loves, but I felt the character was just ok. Honestly, I have nothing positive to say about the entire middle section of this film.
In conclusion…
Over the Moon starts off strong but definitely falls flat towards the middle. What I loved about this movie was the display of Chinese culture, especially when it come to the neighborhood and even the school classroom. Overall story-wise, this movie was a snooze, and I wouldn’t be recommending it to my friends.