Flow Review: Dreamy World, Clunky Cat
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“Is my inner child dead?!”
‘Flow’ made me question myself for a while, especially since I watched it months after its release, knowing it received a lot of appreciation, and even an Oscar. On paper, it does sound like an animated I’d most definitely love – it follows a solitary cat trying to survive a great flood, sharing a boat with several other animals, while their homes and forests are inundated.
Created by Gints Zilbalodis, Matiss Kaza, and Ron Dyens, the 2024 film ‘Flow’ is like re-imagining the biblical Noah’s Arc story, without humans. It’s got no dialogues, dreamy music, and lots of cuddly animals trying to make it alive through a terrible flood. However, the animation, which took the production years to complete, was surprisingly unimpressive when it came to the character designs of some of the animals. The background landscapes in the film are richer in details, but some of the animals looks like digital blobs of clay stretched to resemble cats and dogs.
The primary character, the cat, had the most unimpressive design in Flow, making me think how the hand-drawn cats of Studio Ghibli movies from the 1990s (Whisper of the Heart or The Cat Returns) were more engaging to watch on screen. Maybe I sound like a jilted cat fan now. But to the film’s credit, I’ve become a fan of a new animal: the ring-tailed lemur featured in ‘Flow‘. Its design is better than that of the cat; it’s a cute, curious creature who collects human objects like an old lady with a hoarding problem and joins the boat with a basket full of trinkets. This, despite the story featuring a freaking Golden Retriever – again, whose character design seemed straight out of an early 2000s video game. There’s no way I’d pick a Lemur over a Goldie in the real world.
Okay, honestly, I think as long as the digital animation style of ‘Flow’ doesn’t bother you in the first few minutes, you might enjoy it a lot more than I did. It’s a sweet, albeit slightly unrealistic tale of a bunch of animals forging a lasting friendship, as they navigate a natural disaster together on a tattered boat, fighting off predators (which include some beautifully designed birds), while finding new allies.
Rating: 5 on 10. Watch ‘Flow’ on Prime Video.
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