I was reluctant to see this movie because of the recent experience with animated movies that come from Pixar/Disney. Just another example of how Disney is ruining not just their own domain but also spread their poison to everything else. I did not consider watching it because I just couldn't watch another silly and preaching story, written by incompetent writers that invest more effort in pushing their agenda than writing good characters and building entertaining plot out of interesting story. But after hearing good things I decides to watch it, even renewing my memory with the original 2011 movie before that. And I am sure glad I did. I am glad there are still writers that have some artistic integrity to develop a movie that will be engaging and funny, will show great characters and will deal with much interesting themes than a teenager girl having her first period.

First, the animation is absolutely amazing. The style of animation switches between polished 3d to some sort of 2d imitation that is actually 3d upon a closer look. In a lot of cases it seems to appear drawn roughly with bleaker colors and visible brush lines, only to get closer and transition into 3d with depth. The effect is quite stunning and very refreshing, someone did really good job with this. Second, the direction. The movie is fast paced, full with well choreographed action sequences, with imaginative shots and camera movements, points of view and just in general the flow of scenes and shots is just thrilling and rich with visuals and colors. The editing is flawless, the music, the transition of colors is all just super professional and very impressive.

But Disney animations also have high level of production professionalism, so what is different here that makes it so easy to enjoy all of this richness? It's something that is missing in recent Disney animations. It's competent writing and compelling characters, it's coherent and imaginative storytelling, it's rational plot development, it's lack of cringy dialogs and eye rolling moments, it's dealing with clear and important themes and treating children that will watch this movie as smart and perceptive enough to talk to them about mature subjects that are actually important in real life, it's not insulting viewer's intelligence. It's treating the title character like the main hero of his own story and not like a secondary character, it's not humiliating him and not destroying his legacy and history, it's showing his personal development and overcoming his personal issues with dignity and intelligence.

All of this is here and it is so easy to identify with the all characters because of it all. I genuinely enjoyed watching this all family movie, which didn't happen for many years now, due to the crude deconstruction of animated movies that Disney decided to adopt as their main life purpose. Hope someone in Disney will wake up soon, and The Last Wish will be the perfect example of what they should do instead.