Review: 'Forgotten Island' is a fast-paced animated story that celebrates two girls' friendship and their Filipino culture

Heaven protect the animators who bring their personal stories, rooted in their family’s heritage from far-flung spots on the globe, to become a multi-million-dollar animated movie — whether it’s Domee Shi’s “Turning Red” for Pixar, Charise Castro Smith’s screenwriting in “Encanto,” or now Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s collaboration on the energetic, funny and surprisingly moving “Forgotten Island.”

This movie centers on two girls growing up in a town in the Philippines, and is steeped in Filipino culture and folklore. The girls — rebellious artist Jo (voiced as a young adult by the singer H.E.R.) and studious science nerd Raissa (voiced as an adult by Liza Soberano) — meet as grade-schoolers, outside the principal’s office. Jo disrupted class by reciting tales, learned from her grandmother Lola (voiced by Dolly De Leon), about the legendary monster Manananggal, while Raissa got in trouble for defending Jo from their teacher’s taunting.

For the first 20 minutes or so, the movie shows the arc of their friendship, in a quick-cut montage of their adventures and misadventures — each one immortalized by new items on their twin charm bracelets. Lola is their protector during these escapades, up until Lola gets sick and passes away, right around the time Raissa is preparing to leave the Philippines for college at Caltech.

Jo, afraid that she’s losing her best friend, insists on one last adventure together before Raissa flies off to California. On the beach, they recall Lola’s stories of a magical portal to Nakali, a land of magical sights — and home to Manananggal. On this night, the girls find the key to the portal (a sand dollar with the same sunburst pattern that adorns the flag of the Philippines), and they are suddenly in Nakali.

They also wake up with no memory of the last 12 hours and, like the guys in “The Hangover,” have to piece together what happened — including Jo’s tattoo, Raissa’s missing hair, and the unexpected appearance of a dog-boy, Raww (voiced by Dave Franco), who insists that he is now the girls’ best friend. 

Raww leads the girls to Batiba (voiced by Jenny Slate), a “dream demon” who collects memory-imbued objects in exchange for wishes. Batiba offers to help Jo and Raissa get home, if they will give up their charm bracelets — and, with them, the memories the girls have of their friendship.

The writer-directors, Crawford and Mercado, last collaborated on “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” and they bring back their fast-moving and soulful visual style for this movie. They employ imagery from Japanese anime and, in the depiction of Manananggal, evocations of Laika’s off-kilter stop-motion look. And it all moves at a blistering pace, with the wonders and the jokes flying at the audience.

The filmmakers have collected a voice cast filled with actors of Filipino heritage — notably H.E.R., Soberano and De Leon, as well as Lea Salonga (as Manananggal), Manny Jacinto and Jo Koy. That attention to casting is matched by the thousand little signifiers of Filipino culture and mythology, which give “Forgotten Island” a depth and warmth that make it a movie worth remembering for a long time.

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‘Forgotten Island’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for animated sequences of scary action, language, rude humor, thematic elements, some violence and brief tobacco imagery. Running time: 109 minutes.