Nimona (2023)

There's a version of Nimona that could have been genuinely great. You can feel it in the bones of the thing. A shapeshifting girl of chaotic, gleeful energy. A disgraced knight trying to clear his name. A medieval world that's somehow also got screens and surveillance and all the trappings of modern institutional power. That premise has real teeth, and every now and then the film sinks them in. But just as often, it pulls back, and you're left with something that entertains without ever quite igniting.

Let's start where the film earns its keep: the visuals. The animation has a bold, graphic style that feels genuinely distinctive. It doesn't disappear into the bland sheen that haunts so much contemporary animation. There's an energy to the linework, a confidence in the colour choices, and the action sequences move with real wit and momentum. When Nimona shapeshifts, the film seems to come most alive, as if the animators were relishing every chance to break the rules of form. It looks, at its best, like a graphic novel that's been coaxed into motion rather than flattened by it.

Chloë Grace Moretz is doing something genuinely interesting with the voice performance. Nimona is loud and mischievous and funny, but Moretz finds the hurt underneath all that noise without making a big announcement of it. Riz Ahmed brings warmth and a kind of grounded decency to his knight that stops the film from feeling too frenetic. Together they make for a compelling odd couple, and the friendship that develops between them is the film's emotional core, in the best sense. When it works, it works because of them.

The film's themes are worn proudly on its sleeve. Identity. Otherness. The way institutions fear and demonise what they don't understand. There's a directness to all of this that I respect, and in places it genuinely moves. It reminded me a little of what I love about The Hunchback of Notre Dame, that willingness to let an animated film carry real social weight rather than sand everything down to comfort. Nimona doesn't quite reach those heights, but at least it's aiming in an interesting direction.

The trouble is the runtime, or rather what's been crammed into it. The pacing rushes through moments that deserve to breathe. Character development that could have made the stakes feel earned gets skimmed. The worldbuilding, that intriguing medieval-futuristic mash-up, stays frustratingly vague in places. And the villainy leans on familiar tropes without doing much to twist them. There are real ideas about prejudice and institutional fear buried in the antagonists, but the film never quite digs them out properly. It gestures at complexity and then moves on.

What you're left with is a film that's good, solidly and genuinely good, but that never pushes through into something that stays with you. There's a lot on its mind: acceptance, rebellion, found family, the cost of conformity. It just doesn't always have the space, or perhaps the nerve, to explore all of it fully. The emotional beats land when they come, but there aren't quite enough of them, and some arrive a touch undercooked.

Still. I'd rather watch something with ambition that falls short than something that plays it completely safe and lands exactly where it aimed. Nimona is a little weird and a little scrappy and it clearly comes from a place of genuine feeling about the source material. Nimona herself, as a character, is worth celebrating. She's the kind of creation who deserves more room than the film quite gives her.

Three stars. A solid weekend watch, particularly with younger viewers who'll have no patience for your reservations. Just don't go in expecting to add it to your list of animated greats.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2023  | Watched: 2026-04-06

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US

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