The outsiders: "Nimona"

Much of the coverage of the new animation Nimona has focused on its convoluted route to the screen. To recap: it was initiated by animators Blue Sky (best known for their Ice Age series) under their exclusivity deal with studio Fox, only for the Fox-Disney merger to put production on hold. Disney reportedly objected to the project's themes, and - starved of love, oxygen and resources by their new corporate overlords - Blue Sky folded in April 2021. That the film exists at all is down to Megan Ellison's enterprising Annapurna Pictures shingle, who subsequently rehoused Nimona with the aid of emergent animation studio DNEG (Ron's Gone Wrong) and financial backers Netflix. The behind-the-scenes boardroom manoeuvring is not incidental, because this is a project that would appear especially vulnerable to regime change and corporate thinking, being engaged with race, class and power structures in a way most multiplex-bound animation simply isn't. To consider one element, protagonist Ballister Boldheart has apparently been created by the non-binary graphic artist ND Stevenson to give opponents of affirmative action conniptions. Dark-skinned and one-armed, Ballister is also openly gay, where previous animated characters (at Disney in particular) have at best been given one or two lines that possibly, maybe, if you tilt your head and squint, could arguably be construed as being a teeny bit queer. 

The world Stevenson and directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane open up around Ballister is a mad mash-up of Anglo-American signifiers, part-Blade Runner, part-Excalibur, a futuristic kingdom where knights are knighted on Jumbotron screens and inhabit their own reality TV series. Not poor, put-upon Ballister, however. He's set up for a fall in the film's opening moments: handed a laser-emitting sword that does for the queen in a room full of witnesses who know exactly what they've seen. At his lowest point - on the run, and on the brink of permanent cancellation at the hands of whiter knights led by his golden-boy ex - Ballister falls in with an attitudinous teenager, Nimona, who regards her running mate as a fellow outlaw. But what they are matters less than who they are; identity comes second to personality. Stevenson, Bruno and Quane have dodged the suits threatening to cramp this project's style, and gifted us with characters who are simply immense fun to hang out with, whichever direction the world and its writers drag them in. I suspect it's these characters that kept Nimona alive over the past few years: they've got a lot going for them, and even the squarest corporate gatekeeper couldn't resist or keep them out for long.

Cartoon characters need not necessarily correspond to the drab realities of our world, but it sometimes helps a film's cause if they do - if we can catch a glimpse of ourselves amid the frenetic, industrialised light and magic. (It's why all those digimations about talking animals wore out their welcome so quickly, and why - to parents' despair - very young children continue to respond to the childlike Minions.) The relationship between Ballister and the restless Nimona is a novel one, at least in animation terms. In the early stages, the heroine (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) seems to represent those somewhat overzealous allies who see the LGBTQ+ community as status quo-defying radicals or anarchists just bristling for a fight, when LGBTQ+ folk, too, are citizens with ironing to do and taxes to file and maybe just want the time and the space to get on with them. (And not have to keep proving themselves or their intentions.) This script, by Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor, makes both a gag and a point out of Ballister's core stability (Riz Ahmed brings his usual quiet assurance to voicing duties), and an even bigger and funnier gag out of Nimona's status as a shapeshifter. 

No spoilers, but she develops in unexpected ways, while forever remaining that element of chaos - a properly loony 'toon - which can elevate a comedy to the hallowed level of screwball. (It's always a good sign when an animation reminds you of 2000's The Emperor's New Groove, the last time Disney allowed their animators to toss the rulebook out of the window.) Bruno and Quane match their conspicuous verbal fireworks with judicious deployment of the kind of visual flourishes that threatened to become overwhelming in the recent Spider-Verse films. Watching Nimona's backstory being thrashed out on elementary-school graph paper, you can imagine six- or seven-year-olds pointing at the screen and hollering "hey, I can do that!" (Again, the aim is recognition.) The final act goes for city-trashing scale, which is impressively achieved if a touch disappointing given the up-close, personal and very engaging work that came before it: some of the wit gets sacrificed for spectacle and seriousness. Yet Nimona is never as preachy as it could have been, and certainly not as preachy as it likely would have been had it emerged as a Walt Disney Studios presentation, as was once planned. Instead, Annapurna, DNEG and Netflix have given us a progressive family film that teaches by example - and mostly has a rockin' good time doing so.

Nimona screens at Curzon Camden and Curzon Victoria tomorrow lunchtime, and is also available to stream on Netflix.