Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

We don’t tend to ask ourselves what memory actually does to us. How does it shape our personality? How much of the person we are today comes from the people we met yesterday? And what happens if those memories suddenly disappear?

These are unusually philosophical questions for an animated film aimed at children. Yet Forgotten Island understands something that the best animated films of the 21st century have learned extremely well: children don’t necessarily need complicated ideas to be simplified. Sometimes they just need those ideas presented through a language they can understand.

A DreamWorks Adventure Rooted in the Philippines

Written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado and produced by DreamWorks Animation, Forgotten Island is colorful, funny, imaginative and surprisingly sentimental. Set initially in the Philippines during the 1990s, it follows best friends Josephine “Jo” Yuson and Raissa Molina, voiced by H.E.R. and Liza Soberano.

Jo grows up hearing stories from her grandmother, Lola Fatima (Dolly de Leon), about the mysterious island of Nakali and its fantastic creatures. But those stories become more than childhood entertainment. They become part of Jo’s identity and connect her to someone she loves.

A Friendship Tested by Growing Up

Jo and Raissa form the kind of childhood friendship that makes two people feel almost like soulmates. But growing older brings an uncomfortable reality: two people can love each other enormously and still want different things from life. Can they follow separate paths without losing each other? And is it selfish to expect someone you love to follow your dream when their dream is different?

Those are complicated questions even for adults. Forgotten Island somehow places them inside an adventure filled with magical portals and creatures from Filipino mythology. Nakali introduces us to Raww (Dave Franco), Bungi (Manny Jacinto), Batiba (Jenny Slate), and the dreaded Manang, voiced by Lea Salonga, among many others.

Memory at the Heart of the Story

But the film’s most fascinating concept is memory itself. Imagine slowly losing the memories of your grandmother, your childhood, your first friend, your happiest moments and even your most painful ones. Remove enough of those pieces and what remains?

You may still have the same body, but without everything that shaped you, aren’t you eventually just an empty shell? That is where Forgotten Island becomes unexpectedly moving. I knew the movie had succeeded emotionally when I looked beside me and saw my six-year-old daughter crying. It was the first time I had ever seen her shed tears during a movie. She may not yet have the vocabulary to discuss memory, identity, fear of separation or the complicated reality of growing apart from somebody you love. But she felt what the film was trying to communicate.

And sometimes that is exactly what great animation does. It allows children to understand an emotion before they are old enough to fully explain it.

A Celebration of Filipino Mythology

There is another element of Forgotten Island that deserves celebration: its Filipino identity. The Manananggal, Tiyanak, Batibat, Kapre, Duwende, Kataw and other elements of Filipino mythology demonstrate just how enormous the world’s storytelling landscape actually is. We constantly use the word “diversity,” but sometimes I wonder why we even need to describe storytelling that way. The word can almost make it sound as though there is one default culture and everyone else is an addition to it.

There is no default.

The world has always been this colorful. As simple as that!

For generations, mainstream audiences have grown accustomed to certain European fairy tales and certain images of what fantasy characters are supposed to look like. Even something like Snow White can create arguments over who should or should not portray her.

But why should imagination itself have an ethnicity requirement? There is an entire world filled with cultures, legends, monsters, heroes and stories waiting to be explored. Forgotten Island doesn’t need its Filipino identity simply for the sake of representation. Filipino culture gives the filmmakers a fascinating mythology from which to build an entire fantasy world. And suddenly our cinematic world becomes a little larger.

Perhaps that is ultimately why Forgotten Island affected me so much. Beneath all the creatures, comedy, colors and adventure is something incredibly human. We inherit stories from the people who came before us. We create memories with the people beside us. We dream about the people we want to become. And eventually, we have to understand that loving someone doesn’t necessarily mean walking exactly the same road.

Sometimes it simply means never forgetting what that person added to yours.

Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)