My first impressions for The One and Only Ivan were rather mediocre as the humor was rather dry but also having good heartwarming moments to keep you in.
As for the review itself, it was a decent movie with some good heartwarming moments that makes you feel emotional towards the characters and some dark moments where it leaves you feeling sad for the characters. The cast for the movie was pretty good as they had actors like, Danny Devito, Angelina Jolie, and Sam Rockwell. The director Thea Sharrock took inspiration from the book of similar name and made a good attempt at reimagining the story.
The story starts off in a shopping mall where Ivan is the headliner of the circus, performing his act to big audiences along with other animal friends like Stella and George. They do this routine daily and are pretty much stuck in captivity for a long time. When the crowd dies down however, the owner of the circus, Mark, has brought in a new attraction to be the headliner in the form of a baby elephant named Ruby. She gets all of the attention and makes Ivan a little jealous. When Stella gets injured though, she makes a promise to Ivan that he will give Ruby freedom in the wild. Now he must try to help her escape from the circus and keep his promise.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, they gave this movie a score of 70% which makes it a decent movie in their opinion. One of the critics for the movie says, “This expertly tear-jerking Disney movie seamlessly combines human actors with expressive CGI animals, and even manages a happy ending out of a horrible true story.”
My personal rating for this movie is a 7.5/10. Some things that I liked about the movie were that it gave the viewers a great message to carry on to others throughout the movie and the heartwarming moments between many characters. Some things that I did not like about the movie were the humor was pretty cringeworthy and that it was basically in one setting for most of the movie.
My recommendation for this movie is that if you like heartwarming stories, then you should give this movie a chance but don’t expect any good humor to come from the movie.