The Disney+ movie Flora & Ulysses opens with a montage of comic-book panels exclusively featuring Marvel characters, and its protagonist is a girl who teams up with a superpowered squirrel. But this is not a stealth reboot of Squirrel Girl, although it uses its corporate connection to Marvel in smart and funny ways. It’s an adaptation of the 2013 hybrid prose/graphic novel by Kate DiCamillo and K.G. Campbell, given a Disney sheen but retaining plenty of the source material’s quirkiness. Squirrel Girl never makes an appearance, but 10-year-old main character Flora (Matilda Lawler) does ponder the question of why no one ever notices the Silver Surfer is naked, which seems like an observation Doreen Green might make.
Flora is obsessed with comic books and superheroes because her father George (Ben Schwartz) has been creating his own comics for years, featuring superheroes like Incandesto, who wields the power of a thousand suns. George’s comics have never been read beyond his own household, though, and George’s professional frustrations are partly to blame for his separation from Flora’s mom Phyllis (Alyson Hannigan), a successful romance novelist. Like any kid with separated parents, Flora wishes that her mom and dad would get back together, but she also has a special affinity for George’s work. Despite being a self-described cynic, she longs to experience superheroics in real life.
That’s why she’s eager to declare that the squirrel she names Ulysses is more than just a common woodland rodent. After Ulysses is sucked up by Flora’s neighbor’s self-driving vacuum, Flora uses CPR to resuscitate him. She believes the ordeal serves as his origin story, and indeed, Ulysses exhibits behavior beyond the capabilities of the average squirrel, including typing out poems on Phyllis’ old-fashioned typewriter (mostly about how hungry he is). With the help of her neurotic neighbor William Spiver (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), who’s suffering from temporary trauma-induced blindness, Flora attempts to provide Ulysses with the proper milestones he needs to become a true superhero. She uses comic books as her guides, although they give her a somewhat skewed sense of heroism ("You have to kill people and then regret it afterward," she suggests at one point).
Every superhero needs a nemesis, of course, and the villain of Flora & Ulysses is single-minded animal control officer Miller (Danny Pudi), who makes it his mission to capture Ulysses following an incident at a local diner. Initially skeptical, George is eventually convinced of Ulysses’ powers, and he helps Flora keep the squirrel out of Miller’s clutches. It’s a charmingly low-stakes adventure in contrast to the superhero stories that Flora loves, but screenwriter Brad Copeland and director Lena Khan find amusing ways to incorporate various superhero tropes, from having Ulysses do the familiar three-point superhero landing to Flora making a sort of "squirrel signal" out of a flashlight and cardboard.
With his round dark glasses, insistence on using echolocation and preference for red shirts, William is a good-natured Daredevil parody. Flora says "love you three thousand" to her dad during a sweet bonding moment. The family’s doorbell plays the "Imperial March" from Star Wars when anyone rings it. Those cute touches are entertaining, but what makes Flora & Ulysses work is its upbeat but never cloying tone of family togetherness, as the characters rally around Ulysses and protect him from harm (while he also protects them with his burgeoning powers). Newcomer Lawler gives Flora the right balance of precociousness and innocence, and the adult actors, including comedy pros Kate Micucci, Janeane Garofalo and Bobby Moynihan, are clearly having fun with the silly material.
There are occasional sappy moments, especially as Flora works to bring her estranged parents back together, but they’re usually mixed with bits of snarky humor, including plenty of jokes for the adult audience who’ll inevitably be watching with their kids. A particularly amusing running gag involves "the Jack and Rose," Phyllis’ award for romance writing in the form of a statue of Jack and Rose from Titanic, whose cinematic fate is fodder for various jokes. A deranged cat who attacks at inopportune moments is more jarring than funny, with CGI that leans too far toward cartoonish (as opposed to the effectively stylized Ulysses), but most of the CGI-driven set pieces work well. Khan also throws in occasional comic book-style panels to break up the action, similar to how the book mixes prose with sequential storytelling.
There’s enough potential here to imagine Flora & Ulysses becoming the first original Disney+ franchise, with the title characters taking on new threats -- and making new friends -- in future installments. Flora has her own goofy catch phrase ("Holy bagumba!") and a boundless imagination, and the perfect amount of adult support to encourage her further adventures. And given her position in a certain multimedia conglomerate, a crossover with the actual Squirrel Girl is probably not too far behind.
Starring Matilda Lawler, Alyson Hannigan, Ben Schwartz, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Danny Pudi, Anna Deavere Smith and Kate Micucci, Flora & Ulysses premieres Friday, Feb. 19 on Disney+.