Remarkably Bright Creatures Review: A Charming Pair Can't Save A Dull Mystery

We've seen endless inspirational dramas where dogs can transform the lives of new owners and help give them meaning where there previously was none. But what is there for animal lovers who aren't dog people? The close bond between mankind and man's best friend is simple to dramatize, so when it comes to portraying inter-species friendships with other members of the animal kingdom, those animals wind up being characterized like loyal pooches too.

Titles ranging from the sweeping equestrian epic of "War Horse" to a charming indie like "A Street Cat Named Bob" remove anything too specific about their animals to tell stories that wouldn't be too different if they had a canine lead in their place. Now it's the turn of "Remarkably Bright Creatures," adapted from Shelby Van Pelt's 2022 bestseller, to take on this winning (and not entirely uncynical) formula, replacing a dog with an all-seeing, all-knowing octopus who wants to improve the lives of the humans caring for him.

If this sounds more like a "30 Rock" gag than a sustainable movie premise, you might be surprised to hear that writer-slash-director Olivia Newman (who previously adapted another bestseller, "Where the Crawdads Sing") and co-writer John Whittington are at least partially aware of the absurdity. The inner monologue of their octopus Marcellus is voiced by Alfred Molina, Doc Ock himself, which feels like an admission from the filmmakers that this is every bit as silly as a supervillain with mechanical tentacles — even if they choose to dramatize everything with the utmost sincerity.

Unfortunately, the limitations are clear from the start, as it's hard to have an octopus remain at the center of the narrative when he's stuck within the confines of an aquarium, and he gradually becomes irrelevant to the intergenerational human drama. The movie fails at convincing us that the journeys of both human leads would be different without him — by the very nature of their jobs, they would have crossed paths and bonded anyway.

Sally Field stars as Tova, an elderly cleaner at a small-town aquarium still stubbornly working despite being past retirement age. She has a small group of friends in a knitting group who care deeply about her, but she still feels unable to discuss a tragedy that occurred decades earlier — the only person she can talk openly to is Marcellus, the lone octopus in the aquarium.

One night, he escapes from his tank and gets trapped in computer cables in a nearby office. Tova saves him, but winds up twisting her ankle, which is where drifter Cameron (Lewis Pullman) comes in. He's a guitarist in a failing band (with the dreadful name of Moth Sausage), and he arrives in town searching for someone who owes him money and in need of a job to tide him over in the meantime. So, with Tova's role suddenly vacant, he takes over, and on his first night, she arrives just as he's struggling to get Marcellus back in his tank, beginning an unexpected friendship between the two.

Any sweetness you can find in "Remarkably Bright Creatures" is through the endearing chemistry between Field and Pullman, even if their arcs don't yield anything in the way of a surprise. Tova gives Cameron the confidence to take to the stage as he struggles to step out on his own; as a woman still grieving the son she lost decades earlier, becoming a surrogate mother figure allows Tova to finally come to terms with her most unresolved trauma. There's nothing in the formula that isn't a pre-existing cliché, but the characters are drawn with enough specificity that this doesn't feel like too much of a crutch. 

And besides, this is a film aimed at giving the audience looking for the comfort of those clichés something heartwarming and a little quirky, set in a quaint, picturesque town that feels a world away from the divided America the movie is being released into. It manages to tick those boxes without feeling as algorithmic as other Netflix movies with these descriptors might, and that's largely due to the warmth of the two leads. They manage to make the lived experiences of their characters feel authentic, no matter how formulaic the narrative beats around them.

The bigger surprise with "Remarkably Bright Creatures" is that the clichés are far more effective than the unique narrative hook: the sentient octopus scheming to bring these two characters together and even helping to resolve the family mysteries that connect Cameron and Tova. It's a quirky angle, but a flawed one, as nothing within the drama suggests that either character would have missed this conclusion without a mollusk's intervention; arriving in the later stages of the film, it feels like a last-ditch attempt to keep the increasingly irrelevant Marcellus central to a narrative that's not quite a mystery, and that never needed him as an omniscient narrator to begin with.

The movie is billed as a mystery, and for evidence of how it falls short in that regard, look at the big release hitting theaters the same day this begins streaming on Netflix: "The Sheep Detectives." That's another outlandish novel adaptation where talking animals are responsible for pushing the humans around them in the right direction, helping to solve a case the bumbling police officer keeps foolishly overlooking crucial evidence for. It's a cute family film that gives children the talking animals they came for, while still operating effectively as a whodunnit; well-constructed enough that even an adult viewer could be caught off-guard by its many reveals. There's nothing as engrossing with the mysterious character backstories here, and the third act reveals are awkward interventions — the actions of the animal kingdom and those of the human world never feel anywhere near as connected as the movie wants them to, the octopus sidekick still a marginal figure despite being painted as an overseeing guardian angel.

While I wasn't left completely cold by "Remarkably Bright Creatures," I found its tried-and-tested clichés far more enjoyable than its wilder idiosyncrasies. Like the movies I listed at the top, this would barely be any different with a loyal dog in the lead — it might even have been better for it.

"Remarkably Bright Creatures" premieres on Netflix on May 8.