The Legend of Ochi is like Mac and Me for the 21st century: A shameless knockoff of E.T. that misses everything that was great about the real thing. Any movie about the close, star-crossed friendship between a young child and cute little creature had better establish their bond and make us care about it. The film can’t do that very well, nor can it do much of anything.
The Legend of Ochi is the feature directorial debut of Isaiah Saxon, who previously made music videos for the likes of Bjork and Grizzly Bear. Beyond selling the cuteness of the main creature, the story’s a plea for tolerance and coexistence. But this has little to add, aside from some strikingly pretty background vistas.
Shot in Romania, the film’s set in a small island village somewhere in Eastern Europe. Yuri (Helena Zengel) is a girl who lives with her father (Willem Dafoe), who’s taught her to fear a race of monkey-like creatures known as the Ochi, whom he blames for the disappearance of Yuri’s mother (Emily Watson). He’s therefore surrounded by a small, gun-toting child army that consists entirely of 15-year-old boys.
But soon Yuri befriends one such cute little creature, portrayed by a puppet, and the two soon form an Elliot-and-E.T.-like bond. At least, the film tells us they do—nothing happens that invests us in their relationship. Maybe it’s the female lead’s lack of charisma, or it’s the film’s constantly shifting tone, in which comedy pops up at random when it doesn’t belong, and the film can’t settle on whether it’s doing magical realism, or pure fantasy.
Playing a character that seems entirely inspired by the “Kill the Beast” number from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Dafoe delivers what could be the hammiest performance of his career, which is saying something—and I thought that even before he donned a Viking helmet. And Stranger Things veteran Finn Wolfhard, as Yuri’s brother, is given almost nothing to do, in a nearly non-speaking role.
The film tries to charm the audience with its cute, Baby Yoda-like creature, and I’d imagine they’re counting on selling some stuffed animal versions of him as well. I laughed just once, at a scene set in a grocery store where a gawky teen clerk pulls a big gun, but only because it reminded me of the same thing happening during the chase scene in Raising Arizona.