Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The One and Only Ivan’ on Disney+, the Story of a Talking Gorilla and the Ache in His Soul

The One and Only Ivan opens with the subtitle “Inspired by a true story.” Then, a gorilla immediately begins talking. Ten seconds in, and the movie is jerking us around already. Stick with it, though, because it does make some sort of convoluted Hollywood-storytelling sense — the new Disney+ family movie is based on K.A. Applegate’s award-winning children’s book of the same name, which is told from the gorilla’s perspective. And the book is inspired by the real-life Ivan, a gorilla who spent nearly three decades in a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington. Now, the movie, whose theatrical release was kiboshed by COVID, streams into your living room on a wave of Disney whimsy.

THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The Big Top Mall has a bargain outlet, a gift shop, a chicken that plays baseball, a rabbit that drives a toy fire truck and a trained seal, and its two anchors are an elephant who doesn’t have to do anything because it’s a lovely and wondrous elephant, and a gorilla who does a miniature King Kong chest-beating act. The proprietor is Mack (Bryan Cranston), a goofball who acts as ringleader of “the smallest big top.” The gorilla is Ivan, a photo-realistic CGI silverback with the voice of Sam Rockwell. Like all the animals, Ivan can speak, but only the other animals can hear/understand him, not the humans — something I like to call the Hobbes Rule. Stella (voice of Angelina Jolie) is the aging elephant, who exudes the type of melancholy of someone who’s feeling like her final days are being spent in a place she’d rather not be, but more on that in a minute.

Mack seems like a reasonably jovial type. His assistant is George (Ramon Rodriguez), who brings his young daughter Julia (Ariana Greenblatt) to work with him because her mother is ill. She hangs out on the other side of the glass from Ivan, who’s a gentle giant in spite of his roaring stage persona; she gives him some crayons and paper and he looks at them quizzically. Mack puts on a cornball accent and outfit when he leads the animals’ performances, which, even here in 1980-whatever-it-is, are drawing punier and punier crowds. So he acquires a baby elephant named Ruby (Brooklynn Prince), who inspires the type of AWWWWW that not only boosts ticket sales, but also dethrones Ivan as headliner. He’s slightly honked off about it, but once he gets to know the adorable little squirt, it’s water off a duck’s back. Whatta softie.

Now, is it me, or are Ivan’s eyes kind of sad? He’s not entirely lonely — Bob (Danny DeVito) is the stray Benji mutt who sneaks into the animals’ indoor, fluorescent-lit holding area to hang out, and it’s worth noting that he talks about how he enjoys his freedom. Maybe Ivan remembers what the sunlight felt like, but he’s reluctant to share the faded memories of his youth when Ruby asks. Are flashbacks far behind such a scene? Ivan grabs the crayons and scribbles a portrait of a beetle. Stella begins favoring one of her feet. Mack likely privately wonders about the future of the Big Top Mall. Julia gives Ivan some finger paints. This being a Disney movie, we’d be shocked if it ended here in the dimly lit concrete bowels of an offramp mall.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Ivan is a MAGICAL DISNEY blend of Bambi, The Jungle Book, The Incredible Journey, Dumbo, King Kong, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Gorillas in the Mist and Blackfish.

Performance Worth Watching: In lieu of the usual hat-tip to an actor or voice artist, let’s just acknowledge how computer-animation artists rendered another digital simian that made us weep a little bit.

Memorable Dialogue: Ivan gets philosophical about human nature: “Why do they want an angry gorilla anyway?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I’ll be damned if The One and Only Ivan isn’t a gigantic-hearted movie with fewer fart jokes than expected for a movie with photo-realistic talking CGI animals existing under the Hobbes Rule. It’s a calm, sweet, tender story that’s bereft of violence, high-volume crudity and most other cynical condescensions of the kiddie genre. It quietly wrestles with the complicated morality of Mack, who earns a living by exploiting Ivan and the other creatures, but also quite clearly loves them too; he’s not a bad man, he’s just struggling with the difficulty and necessity of change. His inner conflict mirrors Ivan’s, who seems at best vaguely content with his numbness, until Ruby’s arrival and Julia’s gifts precipitate his need to see something more than those concrete walls.

Sure, the film sometimes indulges snatches of slapstick and dippy one-liners delivered by celebrity voices (although only a master-level killjoy would fail to praise the existence of a chicken voiced by Chaka Khan). But such things aren’t the emphasis here, nor do they water down the film’s relative sophistication. It subtly addresses themes about conservation, empathy, an individual’s need to be who they are and where they belong. It builds to a beautiful, moving, mildly fantastical and visually lovely finale, and if we complain that we see it coming, then we aren’t seeing what’s important.

Maybe I’m being overly charitable to this movie, considering Disney’s recent penchant for easy-money franchise fodder and live-action regurgitations of its animated classics. In that context, Ivan is a valuable bastion of originality and creativity. Or maybe I’ve grown weary of the assumption that young audiences aren’t equipped to digest movies like this, movies with depth beneath the artifice of its visual delights, movies that don’t feel the need to broadstroke heroes and villains, movies about love, trust, yearning and other complexities of the human condition. Complexities of the human condition, explored through the lovely, soulful eyes of a talking CGI ape existing under the Hobbes Rule. I can appreciate that irony, too.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The One and Only Ivan is delightful all-ages storytelling. If you see only one melancholy-gorilla movie all year, make it this one.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The One and Only Ivan on Disney+