‘Arco’ review: Eco-conscious animated adventure is Miyazaki-inflected

Childlike wonder meets climate devastation in the modestly realized French animated film “Arco,” a fantasy of the future that centers on the innocent adventurousness of kids as a hopeful reality, still. (Another hopeful reality for “Arco” is its recent Oscar nomination as of Thursday morning.)

While animator Ugo Bienvenu’s debut feature, written with Félix De Givry, openly aspires to the playful awe of Spielberg and classic stories such as “Peter Pan,” it also feels of a piece with the unadorned postwar poignancy of René Clément’s “Forbidden Games” and the animated Japanese tale “Grave of the Fireflies.”

The titular boy (voiced in this English-dubbed version by Juliano Valdi) is who we first meet: a lively 10-year-old tending to chickens and pigs at a verdant family home suspended above the clouds on a giant platform. Soon his parents and older sister arrive from the air, trailing rainbows behind their colorful capes. They’ve just flown in from a trip to the time of dinosaurs, bringing back flora to add to their sustainable lifestyles. Arco wants to fly, too, but is told he’s not old enough yet.

Since when did that stop a willful kid? When Arco swipes his sister’s flying apparatus for a secret midnight soar, however, he falls into the year 2075 and a tech-dependent Earth world barely hanging on in the face of incessant weather disasters. Which is when we meet kind, forthright suburban schoolgirl Iris (Romy Fay), her tech-laden life marked by holograms for parents (voiced by Mark Ruffalo and producer Natalie Portman), a friendly robot for a nanny (not to mention robots everywhere as teachers, cops and the like), and retractable domes encasing every house and building in advance of destructive storms and fires.

When Iris encounters the crash-landed Arco in the woods, a friendship develops, built around trying to make his way back (forward) to his time, but also a curiosity about each other’s lives. With epic fires on the horizon, though, returning Arco to his original future proves especially fraught, especially with a suspicious trio of bickering explorer brothers (Andy Samberg, Will Ferrell, Flea) tracking their every move, believing they’re onto a big secret.

With its Miyazaki-inflected aesthetic rooted in hand-stylized humans and a juxtaposition of natural-world splendor with the sheen of artificial enhancements, “Arco” is a sweet yet slight sci-fi vision, an “E.T.” riff with a European sensibility. That isn’t always in its favor. Story-wise it can feel like not enough — a simplicity that stalls as much as it enchants — and the less said the better about the hapless adult brothers, who lean more toward creepy than funny.

The animation is a mixed bag, too. The backdrops tend to be more inviting than the foregrounded characters, with Iris’ and Arco’s eyes oddly lifeless for a movie dependent on their connection and in which adults are shown as absentee stewards, often sporting high-tech shades that indicate a remove. At its best, when theme and visuals are in sync, “Arco” has the easy charm of something half-remembered from one’s cartoon-packed youth: beguilingly earnest and awkward in equal measure.

“Arco” defies dismissing, however, especially as it pertains to what lies in store for humanity. It’s an agreeably heartfelt reminder that children are powered by an imaginative daring and purity of bonding we’d be wise to nurture, not squelch, if we’re going to learn how to inhabit the increasingly uninhabitable.