Rating: ★★★★½ / ★★★★★

What a fantastic film.

I’m glad Disney now has the safety net of Disney+, because movies like this are allowed to exist again. Under different circumstances, I’d have said this deserved a theatrical release, but given how currently difficult it is for any movie to make a good box office return, straight-to-streaming was the smart move for this one.

I had no idea what to expect before I pressed the play button for this movie, but now that I’ve seen it, I think this is one of Disney’s best live-action films… well, ever. There isn’t a single boring moment and the cast is a joy to watch — the five main young actors all bolster this film with natural performances and the sense they’re all having fun.

Now that I mention it, this film doesn’t really have that big of a cast. Most of the screen time is dedicated to the five kids and their quest to make it to the crater. It’s a road trip movie, but not the usual kind where they meet various eccentric strangers along the way. Instead, it’s really just about these five kids and their coming-of-age, both individually and with each other.

John Griffin pens this screenplay with a lot of gentleness and intimacy, crafting an emotionally resonant and triumphant celebration of childhood friendship. There’s a lot of visual wonder, but Kyle Patrick Alvarez directs this film in a way that never loses focus on the small-scale nature of the story. This isn’t a big film, but that in itself makes this film feel even bigger, a sweet exploration on how much individual relationships and smaller moments matter.

Because there is a bigger story here — they could’ve focused on how this dystopian society came to be, or how politics between different planets function, or how the adults around the children run this society unjustly. Instead, by keeping the entire thing focused on these five young characters, the emotions all feel so superlative and the empathy you feel for these five is sky-high. You learn to love these kids, you understand how they’re feeling each and every step of the way.

All in all, this film took my breath away when I wasn’t really expecting it to, and isn’t that a great thing? It’s always so magical when an original film grabs you like this, when you enter a film with zero expectations of what it’s going to be like and you come out with a brand new love. If streaming services are the way to get well-made big-budgeted original films again, I’ll all for it.