Review: Forgotten Island is an unforgettable adventure, and a bright bit of big-screen Filipino representation

On paper, Raissa (Liza Soberano) and Jo (H.E.R.) don't read as the likeliest of friends. Raissa is studious, smart, dedicated. She's a "rocket," destined for great things, a big life full of impressive accomplishments. Jo, on the other hand, is an agent of chaos. She's full of schemes, but has no plans for her life. We first meet our heroes when they're kids in elementary school. Jo is the new girl, giving a family history project that turns into a treatise on the folkloric manananggal, a vampire-like creature that can split its body in two. The class's teacher is, understandably, flabbergasted: how is this monster related to family history? Jo tells the class that her lola (Dolly de Leon) once saw the manananggal when she traveled to the magical island of Nakali, and since Jo is being raised by her lola, that makes this presentation relevant to the assignment.

The presentation is also Jo's ticket to the principal's office, for being so graphic and inappropriate, and also for Jo's subsequent (also violent) outburst when a bullying classmate makes fun of her for it. Soon enough, Raissa joins her there. Her crime? Taking the teacher to task for saying that it wouldn't be physically possible for the manananggal to fly, a bit of educational malpractice her scientific brain can't let slide. Outside that office, Jo and Raissa strike up the kind of easy friendship only kids can, one that carries them through the years. Their most memorable adventures, big and small, are commemorated on their charm-filled friendship bracelets, totems that chart a lifetime (well, a decade or so) of memories.

Now, on the precipice of adulthood, Raissa drops a bomb. Instead of going to university in Manila as originally planned, she's heading to the States for college: Caltech in Pasadena. Jo, who's working at a fast food place, sees her future plans (i.e., transferring to a store in Manila and crashing on Raissa's dorm room couch) crumble before her. On the night of their last hurrah, the friends finally find what they spent their entire childhood looking for: a portal to Nakali, a chance to explore the magical land they dreamed of for so long.

Forgotten Island is, maybe above anything else, an energetic and infectious celebration of Filipino culture. I think I saw the film in the most ideal possible setting: at the Manila Film Festival here in LA, in an audience that was almost entirely Filipino. There were so many moments during the film where people whooped and clapped and laughed at things that didn't necessarily register for me: certain foods, a picture of Jesus that my husband informed me he saw at every Filipino friend's house during his school years, a jump rope-esque game of jumping over two wooden poles. The film's directors, Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado (who also helmed the fantastic Puss in Boots: The Last Wish), were on hand to talk about how important it was for them to fill the screen with Filipino iconography, mythology, culture, food, faces, voices, music. And, for my money, they really hit the mark on that front.

And whether you know all the references or not is, to a degree, beside the point. I went in knowing literally none of the creatures of underlying lore that animates Nakali, but even if you don't, the film works as a rip-roaring and fantastical adventure that is positively teeming with imaginative flourishes and strange beasts. It is such a fun ride, populated with hilarious and colorful characters (from the energy drink-addicted pixies to an army of adorable mushroom people who hate being called cute) and beautiful vistas. Over the past few years, it really feels like DreamWorks has cracked some sort of code, where between their more B-tier movies (something like Trolls or Dog Man), they crank out these incredibly well-realized, hilarious, emotionally resonant borderline-masterpieces (like The Last Wish or The Wild Robot). Where "the new DreamWorks movie" has a meaning that points to a bar of quality rather than a house style, because each of their best movies feels so different.

Forgotten Island ranks among the best movies the studio has put out. Once Raissa and Jo land in Nakali, they have a crazy night, such a crazy night that they wake up with no memory of it. They come to with a wild haircut (Raissa), a new tattoo (Jo), and a weredog companion named Raww (Dave Franco) showing them photos of all of the adventures they got up to. (Yes, Raww is likely to awaken something in a wide swathe of the audience, myself included. DreamWorks seems determined to make furries of us all.) So Forgotten Island kind of plays like a family-friendly take on The Hangover, where the gang is trying to piece together the previous night, namely so they can find the portal-opening key that has gone missing. Raww is their island guide, but he's not the most reliable, and he also goes "full-dog" when there's a stick nearby, which is obviously inconvenient.

Along the way, the ragtag group gets even ragtag-ier with some additional allies, all of whom have their own aims, not all of which align with Jo's and Raissa's goal of getting home in time for Raissa to catch her flight to the States. And, all the time, there's the looming threat of the manananggal (voiced by recently Hollywood Walk of Fame starred legend Lea Salonga, who was also in attendance last night), who is a truly terrifying creation. Every time she enters the scene, she casts such a looming, horrifying shadow across the proceedings, a vicious presence who feels unstoppable.

From the film's trailers, I thought that Jo and Raissa were gradually losing their memories the longer they stay on the island, but that's not actually how the film unfolds. It's more about them remembering their previous night to find the key, and weighing if they're willing to give up memories of their friendship as a final payment to return to their world, courtesy of a catlike memory demon (voiced by Jenny Slate) who collects memories/trinkets from various visitors. She's like Chiron for this world, with a Cheshire Cat-like mischievousness to her. When the film finally gets down to the nitty-gritty of "will they sacrifice their memories," it hits exactly the way I hoped it would, with a beautiful sequence that reminded me of Eternal Sunshine.

Obviously, the importance of memories is the foundation of this story. Memories are magic, and they make up the fabric of who we are: without our memories, we are nothing. We have nothing. And that folds right into the way that the stories we tell are so indicative of our identities too, because all of our stories are also branches of our memories. Throughout their quest to find the key, Jo and Raissa trace their steps and re-meet a lot of newly-made friends who share their memories of the night before, the impact that Jo and Raissa made on them. These stories don't all necessarily line up. There are wrinkles, contradictions, maybe even some outright lies. But these stories, these memories, mean something, show the impact that a person (or two) can have on you, or your whole community, just by bringing some joy, some laughter, some heroics. The film is a beautiful ode to the connections and memories we make together, and the way those empower us to be stronger, kinder, and braver.

One of the film's biggest strengths is, for me, also its biggest (occasional) misstep. This is an astonishing-looking movie, maybe the apotheosis of the post-Spiderverse animation world we live in where a film shifts styles at the drop of a hat, taking big aesthetic swings to highlight and underline jokes, emotional beats, character moments. Some sequences settle into totally different styles, with one character's recollection of the previous night taking on an anime sheen. It's a visual roller-coaster, gorgeous and thrilling and wild. But, it also sometimes overplays its hand a bit, and gets a little exhausting. I have this issue with the Spiderverse moves, too, where when the visuals are so reluctant to settle down, the story-telling can suffer. The fireworks of how the world is being presented can drown out the narrative and character beats. It becomes a little exhausting, overwhelming, dulling. It's a minor gripe here, as the film resists the temptation to over-stimulate during its most impactful sequences, but it still grated on me a bit at times.

But that's a very minor issue, and one that's easy to forgive. On the whole, I was swept away by Forgotten Island's beautiful world, the emotional story, the imaginative characters, and the touching friendship at its core. It's a massive home run for DreamWorks, and a movie I'm excited to revisit and cry through again.

l to r: Director Januel Mercado, director Joel Crawford, actress Dolly de Leon,
actress Lea Salonga, moderator Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala