It is a day that Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) had been waiting for his whole life, to be knighted and serve his realm.  After Queen Valerin (Lorraine Toussaint) returns to him his sword, a laser beam emits itself from the hilt and pierces the Queen’s heart, killing her.  Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), one of the new knights and Ballister’s boyfriend, draws his sword and disarms Ballister for his attack on the queen.  Ballister insists that it was a setup, but it is not enough, and he is forced to live in exile where he meets Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young shapeshifter who has been similarly shunned from the town because of an ancient legend that also painted her as a villain. 

When Disney bought Twentieth Century Fox, the purchase came with Blue Sky Studios which Disney quickly shuttered and Nimona was cancelled along with it.  The beloved and anticipated title was feared to be a lost cause until Annapurna Pictures picked it up with a distribution deal already in place from Netflix.  The 101-minute Nick Bruno and Troy Quane-directed passion project premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival ahead of its limited theatrical run, and when it did hit the streamer, it was eagerly welcomed by audiences.  Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor penned the script based on ND Stevenson’s graphic novel and the pair are unafraid to tackle some mature topics in an approachable, respectful, and insightful way that opens the story up to audiences both young and mature. 

One of the most immediate things noticed when Nimona starts is the look of it all.  It is one of the more interesting-looking animated films favoring discordant angles and painting with colors a shade or two darker than pastels.  This style takes a few minutes to get acclimated to, a task that becomes more difficult as we are also trying to place this story in some sense of time or place.  The film takes place in The Kingdom, a walled-off realm that relies on sword-wielding knights for protection, but even the lowest of peasants walking through the market stalls have cell phones in their pockets as hover cars zip to and fro overhead.  It is simply a pill that must be swallowed, and the sooner audiences can accept that Nimona is double dipping in a way that makes it totally unique by pulling from the tropes of both medieval and future set stories, the sooner they will be on their way to enjoying this delightful film.  

The title character of Nimona, a playful chaos agent who has appointed herself as a sidekick to Ballister, is exuberantly voiced by Moretz.  Her introduction is like a shot of adrenaline into an already rapidly unfolding story, but she also allows the film to begin to – if you’ll excuse the pun – take shape.  Nimona will not just be a story about Ballister clearing his name and reuniting with Ambrosius, but it will also follow the time-tested arc of two scorned people learning how to open up and be loved again, first by each other and then by the world.  While the arc may sound familiar, its delivery is so much more exciting than the paint-by-numbers approach that some of the other contemporary studios have been putting out lately.  Nimona has a combustible sense of danger about her that keeps us guessing about how she will react and what her motivations are with the added variable that she can shapeshift into different animals.  That power is a driving force in many of the action sequences of the film, with an especially amusing one early on as she helps break Ballister out of his jail cell setting up our expectations for the film as well as a few reoccurring punchlines across the narrative. 

As the story progresses, the script reveals a much wider narrative than it originally seemed in the parallels that the film draws between Ballister and Nimona.  Legend says that long ago, Gloreth (Karen Ryan) drove a great black monster from the land after a heroic battle.  She then led the building of the wall around the Kingdom and the people lived in protected peace for the next thousand years.  During an interlude between the second and third acts of the story, we learn the truth behind the myth in a beautifully rendered sequence that follows a young Nimona, abandoned in the woods and trying to find a family by shifting into the various woodland creatures.  One by one – bird, deer, bear – as her secret is revealed, she finds herself once again alone until she meets a young Gloreth (Charlotte Aldrich) who finally accepts her.  The village, however, does not and frames Nimona as a monster, and feeling the betrayal from someone she held close, Nimona takes the shape of a dragon growing many times her own size and turns ominously black instead of the more playful cotton candy pink shade her animal transformations take.  This flashback sequence has a unique look and feel from the rest of the film, directly reminiscent of the work of Cartoon Saloon in both its style and its emotional register, creating an impeccable lead-in for one of the more haunting images of the film; Nimona, once again in the form of a dragon, marching through town towards the monument to Gloreth with her sword drawn, at the precise height to pierce Nimona’s heart. It is a tragic image that perfectly encapsulates the pain of losing a friend.

Nimona is an unassuming film at first, and to be frank, the bones of the narrative are pretty simple and not all that interesting, but it is the heart and the emotional arcs that make it something so special. From the sugar high of Nimona’s first shape-shifting montage to the popping and inspired soundtrack supervised by Kier Lehman, Bruno and Quane foster warmth and love in every frame and that sense overflows to the audiences as well. It lures us in, like, say, an unassuming street urchin, but instead of revealing a sinister grin of sharp, dagger-like teeth, the two tell a story of fierce acceptance and the importance of finding your family. After being feared a moot endeavor from studios changing hands and being shuttered, and a mid-summer drop on Netflix to feed the algorithm, that it found such an audience – a family of its own – is an absolute triumph and the icing on the cake is an incredible nine Annie Awards nominations, a dark horse quickly galloping up behind the presumed front runners – The Boy and the Heron and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – on their stroll down easy street with a delicious drip of irony that, notably missing from the ballot, is Disney Animation’s centennial celebration title Wish.