"Flow" Review: A Massive Leap For Animation

Latvia's Oscar upset is well-deserved and a milestone for independent animation.

March 31, 2025

In youth, usually at age 5, we’re told the “golden rule:” Treat others how you want to be treated. Of course, that may be a solid idea generally, but more specifically, it falters. If you’re a giver, you naturally attract takers. Takers never give, and givers never realize they’re getting exploited. The givers don’t desire anything in return; they aren’t treating others how they want to be treated, simply in the way most faithful to themselves. The takers would never treat others how they want to be treated because that would require giving. The “golden rule” is thus predicated on everyone actively wanting the best for themselves, but for those too selfless and compassionate for that, it’s a platitude.

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We shouldn’t treat others how we want to be treated but behave authentically and embrace others for doing the same (so long as they aren't ethically repugnant), even if we don’t care for their company. Introverts will never stop meeting extroverts, Catholics will come across Muslims, gay people will encounter homophobes, and on and on and on. It will never stop; no one is perfect, and conflict will never cease. What we can do individually, however, is take advantage of our opportunities to be better.

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Thankfully, some filmmakers remain more concerned with teaching these things than baiting the Academy with self-indulgent nonsense that poorly explores played-out social issues in the hope they’ll nab a trophy on Oscar night. Writer-director Gints Zilbalodis spent five-and-a-half years with his team creating Flow, observing animals instead of anthropomorphizing them, animating on their terms instead of anyone else’s.

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No movie can justly earn automatic consideration, but due to that forthrightness, Flow comes as close as possible. The story isn’t groundbreaking: a cat living in a humanless world discovers the planet rapidly flooding. Forced to rely on other animals to survive, it learns to adapt to a changing world and the new creatures it meets along the way.

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Not quite a tale as old as time, but certainly one that could suffer from diminishing returns. Yet, Flow feels refreshing and original, not only because of its independent animation and painstaking attention to animalistic detail but itsunpretentiousness in managing everything it accomplishes.

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For a film so wildly unlike most in its genre, it never feels intent on seeming different. It doesn’t seem particularly intent on anything specific, like a person overflowing with wisdom who converses merely to converse, knowing that whichever direction the conversation goes, they’ll leave an indelible impression.

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It makes it an incredibly rewarding watch. Characters only equipped with their natural sounds incur our curiosity more than most speaking characters do across hours of film and say more about being human than films with actual humans. Your heart will pound; you’ll bellow “No!” in frightened desperation. This movie makes you feel, root for its characters, and want more of what it offers.

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But Flow’s greatest triumph is being the rare movie where any viewer can truly take from it what they will. Movies that “leave things to interpretation” or “let the audience decide their stance” are ordinarily films that lack genuine ambition. They exist solely to feed the creator’s ego, relying on viewers to do the work for them instead of saying something worth hearing. Flow smartly masters the art of simple storytelling that, when done well, allows people to genuinely access it regardless of the exact manner in which they do so.

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Flow is a film about learning to overcome our differences so we can work together towards a common goal. It’s also about embracing that you don’t have to go at life alone; it’s okay to rely on others. It’s also about understanding that you can form bonds outside your kind and find a “chosen” family.

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It’s about realizing that whatever reason you have to bond to another is above judgment, the way Cat clings to Secretary Bird after the latter saves the former’s life. It’s about knowing it’s okay that even within a group of loyal friends, some will bond more tightly with some than others, like how Secretary Bird ignores the pleas of Labrador and Capybara to rescue the stranded dogs but concedes when Cat implores it to listen.

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It’s about learning to trust those wildly different from you instead of spurning them because they aren’t what you expect and appreciating what they can bring to your life that you didn’t even realize you needed, like how Labrador’s innocent exuberance initially bothers Cat but becomes key in its survival when confronted by secretary bird. It’s about how, when disaster strikes, we must form a true community almost because of our differences, not despite them. Anyone who’s lived through a wide-reaching tragedy can tell you the importance of that.

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Ultimately, that’s the strength of Flow, a movie that imparts to its audience innumerable invaluable lessons that they need regardless of age. Animated films are usually kids' movies, but as Pixar showed us 30 years ago with Toy Story, they have the potential to be much more.

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Having beaten Pixar’s Inside Out 2 for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, Flow shows that the ambition of animation extends far beyond the big studios, and anyone striving to create something heartfelt and beneficial can do so through the wonders of animation. You’re never too old to make friends, change, go outside your comfort zone, depend on people, and learn how important all those things are to making it in this world.

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Sure, many movies float these things, but how many stick the landing cat-style? If you offer to make dinner for a friend and the meat is raw, is it the thought that counts or the food poisoning? Flow is not poison. It’s more of an antidote to what’s happening in our world. We need a reminder that no matter how ardently the powers that be seek to divide, we always have the opportunity to come together and grow as one. We can always find value in people different from us instead of letting our differences keep us apart. These may seem like corny lessons, but much like stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, corny lessons have populated after-school specials for generations for a reason.

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Is Flow perfect? No. It suffers from the Wall-E problem of being captivating in its opening act only to lapse the more characters populate its landscape, even if we like those characters. The narrative becomes repetitive; there are only so many times we can watch Cat fall off the boat and into the water before we wish the film would make its point and get on with it. Its independence makes for a new form of animation to most audiences, but it’s striking most of the time and a bit limp the rest.

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Regardless, we need movies like Flow that teach us things we never knew or have long forgotten, are just as topical as prescient, and maximize their potential instead of fishing for recognition they don’t deserve. It’s bad form to criticize someone for not enjoying something others have taken to, but if you don’t come away from Flow with something, even if it’s more temporarily moving than entirely life-changing, examine yourself and rewatch. You may find you’ve learned a thing or two about how to, perhaps ironically, fight the current instead of going with the flow.