Forgotten Island review: is the humor too much?

DreamWorks' Forgotten Island (2026) is a really good movie with incredible animation and an extremely strong ending, but the humor hurt it for us. It might be the most anticipated animated release, and the trailer looked great. Our scores came in at 3.7 and 3.75, just short of a full four.

Forgotten Island's animation and music are its biggest strengths

Early on we were already saying the animation is incredible for this movie, and overall we loved it. We kept pointing out details: the charms on the friendship bracelets, the architecture of the island market, the way creatures glow. The film is set in the Philippines, and some of the choices in it are really smart.

The music stood out from the start. They are really putting a lot into the music side, and we loved the music choices in this movie, including one scene late in the story.

A strong story that gets darker than expected

We think the story is good and the way they tell it was great. The beginning is strong. The middle slows down while you figure out the memories and everything else. Then the ending is extremely strong.

The film goes darker than we expected. The idea of characters giving away their precious memories in a trade struck us as really sad and dark. We were also shocked by how quickly the plot moves. Our theory midway through was that the memory collector had taken the winged vampire woman's memories, and that was why she had gone crazy. When the film revealed the memory thief, we called it.

The jokes in Forgotten Island did not land for us

Our main complaint is the comedy. It felt like a fever dream and was kind of overstimulating. At one point it reminded us of The Hangover. Some of the jokes were rough, and a lot of them were fart and butt jokes. We like clever humor, though we get why they did it. Shrek had things like that too. The film is animated for everyone but meant for younger audiences.

The verdict we landed on: "They went too hard with the humor." As one of our closing thoughts put it, "Just the humor kind of hurt it for me."

Our scores for Forgotten Island

We gave it a 3.7 and a 3.75, basically the same rating. Neither of us felt it reached a full four, but it was close. "That was a lot of movie," and the overstimulation was a lot. Overall, though, it was a fun movie and we really enjoyed it.