‘Nimona’ Review: Pink Hair, Punk Spirit and a Formula-Thrashing Story Set This Rebel Toon Apart

Once upon a time, animated movies made it easy to tell the heroes apart from the villains.

Now, the trend is for princesses to remain happily unmarried (“Frozen”), for kids to know better than their elders (“Encanto”) and for monsters to be revealed as misunderstood allies (“Luca”).

For a while, those twists on the Disney fairy-tale formula felt surprising to audiences, aligning nicely with where the cultural conversation was headed.

Through repetition, however, such enlightenment has become its own cliché.Enter Nimona, who brings a fresh dose of attitude to such inclusive messaging.

She’s a monster, but doesn’t like to be called that.

(And who can blame her?) Apparently the only one of her kind in a fictional kingdom where medieval customs and flying cars aren’t mutually exclusive, Nimona is capable of shape-shifting into practically any species — be it a shark, a rhinoceros or a ginormous dragon…

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