We went into Forgotten Island on episode 4 off a trailer neither of us thought looked that good, which might be exactly why it worked on one of us. Jeff walked out giving it five out of five. Matt landed on three.
Same movie, two different nights
The setup follows two lifelong Filipino-American best friends, one studious and headed off to college, one wild and working the counter at a chicken restaurant, who finally make the trip to the fantastical island tied to one of their grandmothers. Once they get there, the movie turns into a Hangover-style morning-after mystery: they wake up with no memory of the night before and have to piece it back together.
For Jeff, it was a perfectly executed animated film: fun, action-filled, and in an animation style he loved, and a pleasant surprise given his mood that day. He found the pacing unusually relentless for an animated movie, with none of the usual mid-movie lull, and said the dialogue rewards listening closely. He enjoyed it on his own and as a movie to watch with his son, and the two of them were laughing throughout. His favorite detail was a minor character, a three-eyed baby still attached to his umbilical cord, who spends the movie worried about catching pink eye and then does.
Matt didn't disagree there was fun in it, but the "what happened last night" structure didn't pull him along the way it should have, and the pacing dragged for him once they actually reached the island. He also brought his five-year-old, who had no idea what the movie was about going in, and found the film's antagonist noticeably more intense and scary than it needed to be for a family audience.
A shared soft spot, one hard no
Where we lined up was the Filipino culture running through the film's early scenes: a going-away party, a backyard barbecue, a picture of Jesus watching over the food, all handled with real affection instead of played for a cheap joke. Matt placed it alongside DreamWorks and Pixar's recent run of country-specific stories like Coco and Encanto, and only half-joked that Paraguay should be next. The grandmother relationship at the center of the story reminded both of us of Moana.
The one thing we fully agreed was a miss: the film's merman character. He's animated in a completely different style from the rest of the movie, something closer to a Tinkerbell or Sofia the First special, and he sticks out every time he's on screen. Jeff forgave it as part of the movie's overall weirdness. Matt didn't.
We even disagreed on what the animation style reminded us of. Jeff's son thought it looked like the newest TMNT movie, and Jeff leaned toward Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Matt thought that comparison was too generous and landed closer to the animated Avatar: The Last Airbender instead.
Hear the full conversation, along with our Hamnet revisit and our top five Tom Cruise movies, on episode 4.