Well, this was unexpected. A Danish animated family film that takes all manner of cues from Pixar (although, let’s be fair, just about every animated movie borrows somewhat from that studio, especially these days), and yet it being as derivative as it is is barely even an issue. Partly because the scavenged material at least makes sense as to why someone else would want to use it (unlike, say, the number of films I’ve covered of late who basically took the finale of Toy Story 3 wholesale), but partly because in the process of taking those ideas… this film manages to go even darker with them.
Said ideas are largely in the form of Pete Docter’s contributions to Disney/Pixar, showing a dreamworld full of blue creatures who basically create film productions for what we see when we dream; it’s essentially a subplot from Inside Out made into its own feature film. Same goes for the animation style, which is quite round and bouncy along with a lot of Monsters Inc. on-rails mechanics in the set design, turning the abstract world of dreams into a Beetlejuice-esque industrial bureaucracy. It even dips its toes into Inception territory with how dreams and filmmaking end up overlapping within the narrative proper, only given a kid-friendly steampunk make-over.
While these influences on their own are rather surprising to see here, the way they are utilised is something else. The impetus for the main plot is when Minna (Robyn Dempsey) stumbles into this oneiric backlot while she’s sleeping, and begins to play around with the dreams of her family members. The very idea of that, being able to alter someone’s dreams and, in turn, alter the person having them, is rather unnerving if you think about it for too long, and while the implications might be a little too dark for this film to come to terms with, what it does end up depicting can get pretty heavy. Like, ‘you screwed around with their mind and could've killed them’ kind of heavy.
The recurring examinations of abandonment and family relationships add some serviceable emotional power to the story, although I must admit, I’m just thankful that the localisation work didn’t completely sabotage it. The lip-sync is definitely awkward (albeit nowhere near as distracting as in something like Terra Willy) but it seems like the animators planned for that beforehand, as there’re quite a few instances of characters talking off-screen or being otherwise obscured by the set design. As a result, since the lips of the characters aren’t in nearly enough of the frame to be a bother, it makes the decent acting and imagery shine through.
Yeah, it’s hella derivative and doesn’t equal up to the emotional gut-punches of its influences, but it managing to do this much with that material is still rather commendable. A bizarre form of ambition went into this, extrapolating existing ideas to reveal some delightfully messed-up notions that, for as uncompromising as Docter can get, I don’t even think he considered. After seeing quite a few animated films already this year that played things way too safe, seeing something that gets into such casually disturbing territory wins points from me, and… honestly, even for adults, I’d have to recommend this.
Also, bonus points for including an Instagram-glued teenaged girl and actually making me warm up to her, rather than just grating on my nerves as is usually the case with that archetype.
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