Brad Bird makes the case that animation can be for adults with Ray Gunn. The big-budget film noir comes not from Pixar, where Bird helmed such hits as The Incredibles and Ratatouille, but from Netflix, which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar last winter for KPop Demon Hunters.
To be clear, Bird’s latest isn’t inappropriate for kids. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, this animated movie with a film noir core could play to children and grown-ups alike. But it’ll be older audience members who can best appreciate the influences Bird is bringing into play in Ray Gunn.
What’s Ray Gunn about?
Credit: Netflix
The film, written by Bird and Matthew Robbins, is named for Raymond “Ray” Gunn (voiced by Sam Rockwell), a former police officer who has quit the force to start his own private investigation firm. But the going is tough, in part because Ray is a shamus so determined to do the right thing that he rejects dirty money.
This high-mindedness is not great news for his partner, an alien named Eye-Ra (Tom Waits). For one thing, if Ray’s not making money, neither is Eye-Ra. For another, these sleuths live in a futuristic urban landscape where aliens are treated like second-class citizens. So, Eye-Ra’s options aren’t as plentiful as his human partner’s.
Bird swiftly establishes the hierarchy of Ray Gunn’s world with a near wordless introduction, where Eye-Ra slips into an office building with a cleaning crew entirely made up of unusual-looking creatures. Sure, some aliens can get ahead, like a badass businesswoman voiced with raspy and passionate aplomb by Kathryn Hunter. But even in her brief role, she speaks to the social pressure to cover her ample limbs to appease the humans. Elsewhere, aliens get ahead through organized crime, mirroring the mafia’s history in the U.S.
Into this stratified city, with its underbelly of gambling and violence, pop star Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson) is a shining light. With her long blonde hair, whiskey-smooth voice, and undisputed beauty, she’s got everything it takes to be a star. But she’s also got a reputation for self-sabotage, the kind that makes tabloid publishers salivate. So, when her management needs someone to keep an eye on Venus ahead of the debut of her new album, they call on Ray Gunn (and Eye-Ra). However, romance, betrayal, and a bit of murder make this supposedly easy job a very hard day at work.
But don’t fret, parents. Bird is careful to keep the violence offscreen or comical, so the darkness of the film noir genre won’t leave your kiddos with nightmares.
Ray Gunn is visually enthralling, with a great cast.
Credit: Netflix
With The Incredibles and Tomorrowland, Bird showed his love of retro-futurism. That’s on full display in Ray Gunn, where yellow cabs and glossy convertibles hover through the air in a sky-high city that’s like The Jetsons meets Chinatown. The design of his characters is varied and refreshing. For the humans, the slick noir style of the 1940s gets a colorful re-imagining through animation; structured suits, silky gowns, and impossibly coiffed hairdos all look resplendent. Alongside that, Bird curls this concept into sci-fi with a bevy of intriguing aliens.
In this world, Rockwell is smartly cast. He’s an Academy Award–winning actor known for wild, live-action films like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Yet as dynamic as he is on camera, Rockwell is just as strong doing voice work, as he’s shown in the animated Bad Guys movies.
Here, the comic sharpness of his delivery is well-employed to keep Ray from coming off too stiff. Rather than channeling noir legend Humphrey Bogart, Rockwell leans closer to Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys. Ray is serious about justice and doing the right thing, but he’s also a bit of a clown. (This is most thrillingly explored in a sequence involving a teleportation gun with some light Cronenberg slapstick as a result.) There are shades of Galaxy Quest in his turn, though Ray will never lose his cool as zanily as Guy, a background actor certain he’s doomed to be a real-life red-shirt, did.
Opposite Rockwell, Waits proves a perfect foil. His low, ragged tone, forged from decades of acting and singing, brings the world-weariness that’s expected of a noir detective. But Waits brings a cutting sense of humor to his exceptionally dry punchline deliveries. Together, they are a terrifically paired odd couple. The pairings in Ray Gunn are less successful when Johansson comes into the mix.
Ray Gunn gets frustratingly predictable.
Kids who’ve never seen a film noir might not see the clichés coming. However, grown-ups will likely be able to predict the movie’s big twists pretty early on. Part of it is that in his homage to this genre, Bird is perhaps too loyal to its tropes. So, reveals for a string of secrets across the second and third act lose their impact as they feel like inevitabilities. But kids who liked KPop Demon Hunters might be drawn in by the colorful aesthetic and Johansson’s pop star, even if her songs aren’t as up, up, upbeat.
There are also some spoilers laced into the voice casting, as some actors are so easy to identify that a double role is not as hidden as Ray Gunn seems to think. Elsewhere, a character actor who’s regularly played a baddie in Disney movies is hard to miss when he pops up in a bit part, tipping a climactic reveal.
Still, even when I was certain I’d cracked the case ahead of its titular detective, I was enjoying the ride of Bird’s Ray Gunn. However, the casting of Johansson feels a fateful misstep. Sure, the American actress has loaned her voice to a slew of movies, including Sing, Isle of Dogs, The Jungle Book, Her, and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. However, Johansson doesn’t match Rockwell or Waits when it comes to voice work.
Within Ray Gunn, she’s called upon to be both the streetwise dame and the femme fatale, with a flourish of pop star glamor that feels more Lady Gaga than Barbara Stanwyck. Even with her signature rasp, Johansson doesn’t plumb the depths of the noir character she’s given. Her voice is always pretty, whether playful or furious. But there’s a lack of texture or perhaps uninhibitedness that makes Venus feel a shallow echo of the noir dames who’ve come before.
By contrast, You’re The Worst‘s Kether Donohue has a much smaller role in Ray Gunn. Yet her voice work — which can also be heard in Star Trek: Lower Decks — stands out. She has moxie, bringing an instant definition to her character. Johansson, as the female lead, falls short of this. Despite a script and animators who aim to mold Venus into a complicated character, Johansson’s performance feels too stiff to make her really come alive.
Overall, however, Ray Gunn is a compelling mash-up of influences that make for a terrifically fun movie sure to entertain kids and parents alike.