(To the likely dread of many worried parents the world over, the film is also a very effective advertisement for Vespa scooters. It should come as no surprise, of course, that Disney is ever adept at selling things.) Luca does well in that regard, though will perhaps be more memorable for what it might have been than for what it actually is. The film arrives at a funny time in Disney’s tortured relationship with queer storytelling, just a few weeks after Cruella featured a sidelined character-second-hand clothing boutique owner Artie-proudly touted as queer, or non-binary, or something. That character, played tartly but briefly by John McCrea, is slightly less of a scrap than the embarrassingly ballyhooed “exclusively gay moment” in 2017’s Beauty and the Beast-but Artie still barely registered amid Cruella’s cynical clamor. Marvel’s Eternals, coming this fall, promises to feature an actual queer character (or characters) toward the foreground of the story, but until then we’ll have to settle for half-hearted innuendos. Unless, of course, one considers the larger umbrella of Disney, which recently acquired 20th Century Fox and has folded much of that studio’s I.P. Last year, Disney punted Love, Victor-a series spinoff of the feature film Love, Simon, the first studio film about a gay kid coming out-from Disney+ to Hulu, declaring the young adult show a better fit for that more grownup streaming service.
