I’m a little late to the game on reviewing Arco, a film I first screened for awards consideration back in November of 2025, but I waited until I finally had the chance to hear the audio description track before sitting down to write this. So, shoutout to Audio Eyes and Sean Boggs, the one man assembly line who wrote and narrated Arco. Sean proves, if nothing else, that it is indeed possible for Neon to commission audio description for a title they picked up at Cannes that originally existed in another language, while apparently keeping costs at whatever Sean earns. I’m assuming it isn’t a king’s ransom. Sean also worked on No Other Choice, another Neon release that felt like it had an entire army of narrators attached to it for maximum mileage, including what I assume was the extended Boggs family tree. Either way, I definitely got more out of Arco the second time around, because there are so many little science fiction flourishes and visual details packed into this thing that can easily slip through the cracks without audio description helping guide the way.

Even with all the grief I give Neon over their spotty relationship with accessibility, I refuse to punish adjacent titles for the sins of the parent company. Arco made its way into my nominations anywhere Animated Feature was available, and when International Feature categories came into play, it snuck in there too. Technically this is a French film with an English dub, and unless a voting body wants to play by strict Oscar rules, it counts. Our little Blind Film Critics Society nominated Arco in both Animated Feature and International Film, because we only nominate films that actually have audio description tracks. Funny how accessibility works when you make it a requirement.

Arco begins way out in the future, where a young boy named Arco accidentally travels back in time to a moment that is still technically ahead of us, but also apparently the point where humanity decided to start speed-running bad decisions. Even as a kid, Arco understands one of time travel’s most sacred rules. You do not go around telling people from the past about the future. That becomes difficult when he befriends a girl his own age living in a world where robots have become teachers. Someone somewhere has been paying a little too much attention to the current trajectory of generative AI. Of course Arco gets pulled into events. There are shady plots brewing, some bumbling antagonists wandering around causing problems, and like most family friendly science fiction adventures that gently wave warning signs at us about the future, things mostly work out. I think. It feels a little like Ferngully for the modern age. Instead of “save the rainforest,” the film quietly nudges us and says, “Hey, maybe stop driving civilization directly into a ditch.”

The film itself is short and efficient, loaded with an incredible voice cast including Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Andy Samberg, and Flea. Yes, that Flea.

Last year felt odd to me because I watched five animated films that I really liked, but none of them completely separated themselves from the pack. I’ve since seen Chainsaw Man, which honestly creeps right into that same neighborhood, but Arco, K-Pop Demon Hunters, Zootopia 2, Little Amelie or the Character of Rain, and In Your Dreams all sat clustered together in my brain with very similar scores. The year before gave us The Wild Robot, which felt different. That had that forever-film energy. That desert island quality where you can imagine revisiting it for years and years and never really getting tired of it. Arco, unfortunately, lands in the category of really good without quite finding that extra secret ingredient.

That probably ends up being my biggest criticism of the film. I liked it. I was more than happy to revisit it for accessibility purposes, and I enjoyed it just as much the second time around. But when I think about the animated giants that somehow escaped time itself, films like Toy Story, Spirited Away, How To Train Your Dragon, Grave of the Fireflies, or Wall-E, Arco never quite reaches that mythical level. I mean, I used to cry all the time when I saw Wall-E, in that little moment where it looks like he isn’t coming back, and I didn’t trust Pixar to give me a happy ending. Off topic, but the scene doesn’t work on me anymore with audio description, as a lot of it is in the incredible specific emotiveness of the robots who basically just repeat each others names. A testament to beautiful animation. But, Arco can’t match that. It doesn’t match that, or the emotional devastation of Grave Of The Fireflies either. Hell, It can’t match that scene in Frozen where it looks like Anna is done for. I still say, if the directors had the chutzpah to hold on that for just a few more seconds, throw in Elsa doing Do You Want To Build A Snowman (reprise), the audience would ahve melted, like Olaf. But, I digress.

Still, I worry Arco flew almost too far under the radar, and it really shouldn’t have. It is a lovely film with a wonderful voice cast, an urgent story, and a sublime score. I caught it on Hulu and Disney Plus with audio description, though depending on when you read this you might have to do some scavenger hunting.

Kids deserve to see films like this. Not empty bottomless pits of despair like the last Smurfs film, or shiny distractions like Goat that somehow feel assembled by algorithm. Give your kids animated sustenance. Hand them something with actual nutrients in it, because none of us know what future they are inheriting.

Arco is a wonder to behold.

Fresh: 8.3/10