Flora & Ulysses
I can’t say that I expected much from this Disney+ movie, but I hoped for something more than what we get out of “Flora & Ulysses.” Based on the children’s book by Kate DiCamillo, this movie honestly boils down to one thing- too much Flora, and not enough Ulysses. Ulysses, by the way, is a squirrel that Flora saves after being sucked up into a vacuum cleaner, and whom comes out on the other end with superpowers. Lena Khan’s film is one of those where maybe less of the grounded human story would have been better, especially since it’s a generic story of a broken family going through divorce.
When we first meet Flora (Matilda Lawler), she is looking to sell some of her comic book collection. There’s one that she cannot quite part with, however, and that is one that her father, George (Ben Schwartz), created. George never sold it, though, and as a result, his writing career has taken a backseat to a menial job at an office supply store. Things are not much better for Phyllis (Alyson Hannigan), however; she is a best-selling romance novelist, but since her marriage has started to fall apart- now, she is under pressure to deliver a new book, and is about to get a newspaper article in support of her new book. Unfortunately, the letter “J” not functioning on the typewriter she just purchased seems to be emblematic of how things are going. When Flora rescues the squirrel, her and dad are excited, but Phyllis can’t get there, and the mayhem that occurs afterwards adds to the chaos around the family.
Flora is intended to be cynical about the possibility of hope at the start of the film, but Ulysses turns to a beacon of hope for her so quickly that the script by Brad Copeland feels like it has to work overtime to make the family tension and outside tension (including a blind kid next door (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), a goofy animal control officer (Danny Pudi) and a psychotic cat) up so that there are stakes in the film. Unfortunately, it forgets that it has a squirrel with superpowers, and they don’t really do a lot with that premise. Of course, I am not the chief audience for “Flora & Ulysses,” and they might enjoy it more than I did, but it feels like a premise with more that could have been done with it.
