Remarkably Bright Creatures is narrated by an octopus called Marcellus. Fortunately for him and for us, he narrates in the calm, smooth, authorial voice of Alfred Molina. The start of Olivia Newman’s film sees the contemplative cephalopod, currently confined to a tank somewhere in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, thinking back to when he roamed the ocean floors, luxuriating in what he describes fondly as “unlimited freedom.” It might even conjure memories of another Netflix project, the sublime and wondrous documentary My Octopus Teacher.

Unfortunately for Remarkably Bright Creatures, the movie doesn’t really have very much to do with this octopus. Its actual subject is a handful of melancholy humans in search of connections, whether they know it or not, whether they think they want them or not. That’s not a bad subject for a film, but compared to an octopus that can escape his tank, insinuate himself into impossibly small crevices around the marine laboratory where he’s kept, and still find time to pontificate about the universe, it’s not everything we might have hoped.

Newman and John Whittington’s adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt’s novel concerns the aquarium’s cleaning lady, Tova (Sally Field). Tova’s got a cheery enough outlook, but also an ingrained sense of hesitation about engaging with those around her, having not fully recovered from twin losses, decades apart, of her son, many years ago, and her husband, more recently. There are surrogate versions of both on the scene: the local shopkeeper Ethan (Colm Meaney), who is always trying to bring her out of her shell, and a drifter and (former) musician, Cameron (Lewis Pullman), whose Volkswagen bus has basically broken down in town, where he’s come to see if he can find the father who abandoned him as a child.

To be sure, both Tova and Cameron, who also comes to work at the aquarium after Tova injures her foot, develop a relationship with Marcellus, such that they tell him their problems over night shifts, thereby proving to Marcellus that not all humans are bad. But Marcellus has a bad habit of leaving the narrative for long periods of time, and also of commenting on things that he is not directly witnessing, which makes him clairvoyant as well as being remarkably bright. (Hint: the term “remarkably bright” may only seem to be referring to him.) This octopus is such an exquisite creation that we imagine a better version of this story in which we’ll accept whatever magical powers Marcellus might have, as long as he’s an intrinsic part of the story rather than just a tangential one.

Newman’s film is the sort that gives us such a nice array of characters played by likable actors that we are pretty easily distracted from its shortcomings. In addition to the impossibly sturdy and long-lasting charms of Sally Field, we get a handful of actresses we haven’t seen in a while as her gaggle of friends (Joan Chen, Kathy Baker and Beth Grant), not to mention a love interest for Cameron in the form of the owner of a local paddle board shop, played by Sofia Black-D’Elia. The charming cast is buoyed by the Pacific Northwest in all its winding cliffside roads and its glorious pine trees.

But just in terms of its story of loss and reentry into the world, told as gently as possible so as never to depress us, Remarkably Bright Creatures is remarkably mediocre. That’s too strong a word, but the existence of Marcellus the octopus – a first-rate digital creation with a real presence on screen – prompts us to yearn for a script with the ambition to match. Instead of just being a comforting star vehicle that goes down easy, Remarkably Bright Creatures could have been something truly majestic.

It does have a funny similarity to a recent – not so recent anymore – best picture winner. The developing of a nighttime relationship between Tova and an octopus does recall the core dynamic of Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, another film in which a sad, single woman is swept away by her connection to an unusually intelligent sample of marine life. Fortunately in this case, there’s no sex, but they do hold hands.

 

Remarkably Bright Creatures is currently streaming on Netflix.