‘Arco’ Review: Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo’s Coming of Age Sci-Fi Film Is the Most Stunning Animated Movie of the Year

2025 has been a truly incredible year for animation, but not from the usual suspects you’d expect. Yes, Pixar had Elio, while Disney still has Zootopia 2 on the way, which will surely be a huge smash. But one of the biggest films of the year is KPop Demon Hunters, an unassuming Netflix release that became their most-watched film ever. Even though it didn’t take off in the U.S., Ne Zha 2 was a massive worldwide hit, while anime releases like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba and Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc have been hugely successful. Hell, we even got a critically-acclaimed animated action film with Predator: Killer of Killers and the return of the Looney Tunes with The Day the Earth Blew Up.

Coming off the success of last year’s Flow, this year has seen incredible independent animation projects, like the affecting Little Amélie or the Character of Rain. But maybe the best animated project to come out this year is Arco, which won Best Feature Film at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and is a stunning coming-of-age, time-travel, science-fiction fantasy from director Ugo Bienvenu that is unlike anything else you’ll see this year, animated or otherwise.

‘Arco’ Is a Time-Traveling Tale That Looks at Our Near Future

We first meet Arco (voiced by Juliano Valdi in the English dub) in the far future, after an event called the “Great Fallow” left the rest of mankind escaping to homes built on high stilts above the earth. This futuristic society has learned how to travel through time, as individuals wear bodysuits with rainbow capes, flying through the sky, leaving rainbows behind as they explore different eras. Arco’s parents (America Ferrera and Roeg Sutherland) and his sister (Zoya Bogomolova) return from a journey where they visited the dinosaurs and were able to bring back a plant sample from that time. Even though Arco is desperate to join in on these adventures, he’s only 10, and the law requires that all time-travelers must be at least 12.

One night, Arco takes his sister’s cloak and tumbles through time, not knowing quite what he’s doing. Arco ends up in the far past for him in the year 2075, where he meets a young girl, Iris (Romy Fay), who takes him in. Iris’ parents (voiced by Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo) are away for several days at work, leaving Iris and her infant brother in the care of the family robot, Mikki, whose voice is a composite of Portman and Ruffalo. Back in 2075, Arco finds that robots are everywhere, helping humans with day-to-day life, while frequent dark thunderstorms ravage the town as the homes remain in closed-off bubbles. In a bit of a nod to E.T., Iris and Arco try to figure out a way to get Arco home after his suit loses a key component, which has been found by three goofy alien-hunting brothers (Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea).

At a quick 88 minutes, Arco contains a lot of ideas, some of which it has to fly through, and yet, it handles these elements remarkably well. Written by Bienvenu and Félix de Givry, Arco gives us just enough information about how the far-future, the near-future of 2075, and the film’s version of time-travel work, without getting too in the weeds and wasting time. For example, in setting up both time periods, all Arco really needs to do is give us a few quick scenes of what everyday life is like for people at these points. When we meet Arco as he waits for his family, he’s feeding the family’s livestock, and we see the fields around his domed house, all of which tell us that technology has clearly advanced (they’re in the sky, for goodness’ sake), yet this far-future has its people returning to the basics and living off their land. Similarly, a quick flyover of 2075 shows a world packed with robots to get things done, cleanup crews (robots as well) picking up debris from the recurring storms, and even though it’s 50 years away, it’s a world not too dissimilar from our own.

‘Arco’ Is a Stunning Feature With a Great Cast That Does a Lot in a Little Time

Bienvenu’s film isn’t too caught up in the details of time-travel; rather, he turns this into mostly a beautiful story of friendship, love, and reckoning with a changing world. While Bienvenu makes it clear that this is the path we’re heading down when it comes to the environment, he never hits the audience over the head with this, letting the surroundings speak for themselves. The friendship between Iris and Arco does feel like a throwback to those types of stories, like E.T., in which two beings get closer as they learn about each other’s cultures and way of life. It’s an engrossing film, one that makes us fall for these characters through their adventures.

Bienvenu’s art style is particularly captivating, almost like a mixture of Hayao Miyazaki and the work of cartoonist Daniel Clowes. It’s a perfect blend for the story he’s telling here, one that can play in the fantastical and heightened ridiculousness at times, but can equally speak to the charming bonds being formed and the terror of what’s happening to this world in 2075. From the rainbow-streaked skies full of time-travelers to the burning surface of the Earth, Arco finds a great combination of the real and the extraordinary through this film’s visuals.

The English dub of Arco includes a tremendous voice cast that reminds one of the packed English-language casts gathered for Studio Ghibli releases. Fay and Valdi are winsome and sweet in their childish adventures, both in over their heads, yet delighted by getting to experience this together. The script here never talks down to the kids and makes them seem more mature than the adults who rarely make an appearance in 2075. The clever usage of both Portman and Ruffalo’s voices at the same time for Mikki is unnerving at first, but this robot quickly becomes one of the most endearing characters of the film, a replacement of both parents that is still held back by his mechanical self. Even though they’re ridiculous, the three alien-hunting brothers played by Ferrell, Samberg, and Flea are a joy when they return. Despite Arco not having much time to tell its story, even these three weirdos get a deserved arc that makes them more than just a joke.

Bienvenu’s film is a warning of what is coming, but it’s also full of optimism and the hope that if we stick together, we can make it through anything. From its narrative that blends so many ideas exquisitely, to the gratifying characters and narrative arcs, to the absolutely stunning animation style, Arco is quite possibly the best animated film of the year.

Arco screened at the Virginia Film Festival. Arco comes to theaters on November 14.

Release Date

October 22, 2025

Runtime

82 minutes

Director

Ugo Bienvenu

Writers

Félix de Givry, Ugo Bienvenu

• Alma Jodorowsky

  Jeanne / Mikki (voice)

• Swann Arlaud

  Tom / Mikki (voice)

Pros & Cons

• Ugo Bienvenu crafts a stunning animated world that balances all of its elements extremely well.
• The voice cast, which includes Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, and Will Ferrell, is one of the best in an animated film this year.
• The animation style is a perfect blend of realism and fantastical.

• At only 88 minutes, Arco doesn’t have enough time to explore some of its deeper issues as well as it could.