File this one under the old warning: Be careful what you wish for … you might get it.
Directors Erik Benson and Alexander Woo have delivered an animated charmer — feeling a bit like Pixar Lite — which also serves as a gentle life lesson about sibling rivalry and messy family dynamics. Indeed, the moral here is the importance of recognizing that sometimes “messy” is the best one can expect.
 |
| Having figured out some of the means by which the "dream realm" operates, Stevie, her younger brother Elliot, and his beloved stuffed giraffe, Baloney Tony — brought to chatterbox life — find a highly unusual means of transportation. |
But as a slightly older Stevie (voiced by Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) laments, in voice-over, this is merely a fondly remembered dream. “This is a disaster movie,” Stevie insists. The actual disaster? The fourth addition to the family, her younger brother Elliot (Elias Janssen), with whom Stevie is forced to share a bedroom.
Elliot is a relentless pest, forever in Stevie’s face, whether trying to impress her with silly magic tricks, or simply being annoying. He clearly just wants to be an important part of his big sister’s life, but she isn’t interested. She’s much more concerned about the growing rift between her parents; Mom is interviewing for a job that would take her elsewhere, while her husband — still hankering for songwriting fame — refuses to leave. To Stevie’s additional annoyance, Elliot is oblivious to this potential crisis.
For Stevie, dreams are a way of fixing things in the real world. A storybook depiction of a magical dream being known as the Sandman fascinates both children; after reciting a mystical incantation, they discover that they can remain conscious while dreaming, thereby altering what they experience.
“Find me,” the distant Sandman intones, “and your dreams will come true.”
The resulting “dream realm” is a chaotic whirlwind of imaginative pocket lands populated by colorfully exaggerated creatures concocted from real-world experiences. Elliot’s beloved stuffed giraffe, Baloney Tony (Craig Robinson), bursts into wisecracking life, serving as a snarky, often frightened Greek chorus to subsequent events. Frolicking breakfast foods hearken back to Stevie’s cherished memories of making pancakes with her parents.
Benson and Woo draw from many sources for this cacophony: the wackiest of Tex Avery’s Warner Bros. cartoons; the impossible landscapes and buildings of M.C. Escher; a riff on the Disneyland ride It’s a Small World; and even Winsor McCay’s early 20th century newspaper strip classic, Little Nemo in Slumberland. When Stevie’s bed abruptly sprouts legs and becomes a galloping flying carpet, that’s pure McCay.
But any dream realm also must include a figure of dread: in this case Nightmara (Gia Carides), a being Stevie and Elliot are warned to avoid. That caution comes from the Sandman (Omid Djalili) who, when finally encountered, seems a ghostly, genial sort of Santa Claus. He promises that if the children can avoid waking up, until the sand runs out of his giant timer, then the real world will become what Stevie wishes it to be.
This heavier emotional stuff is blended with screwball incidental encounters. One hilarious running gag involves Elliot’s susceptibility to a white noise machine, which instantly puts him into a comatose snooze.
The underlying morals are easy to spot. Stevie must accept Elliot as a loving friend and partner; they won’t emerge from this adventure happily, unless they depend upon each other. More crucially, Stevie must learn that she can’t “fix” everything, nor is it her responsibility to try.
Hoang-Rappaport and Janssen give the two children a great tag-team dynamic; Stevie always tries to be practical and “adult,” while Elliot prefers impulsiveness and having fun. (Of course he does; he’s a little boy.) Robinson is a hoot ’n’ holler as Baloney Tony, and Liu and Milioti put quiet pathos into the possibly fracturing bond between the children’s parents.
The directors and a quartet (!) of editors move things at a lively clip, and the film feels just right at 90 minutes. Composer John Debney supplies an energetic score that enhances these whimsical proceedings.
The result is entertaining and graced with a solid moral: always a nice combination.
No comments:
Post a Comment