I’ve really come to appreciate the films of director Francis Lawrence. Sure, his work on the Hunger Games sequels represents the best of the 3rd wave of YA adaptations (not to mention what might be my favourite scene in any movie with the Hanging Tree sequence in Mockingjay Part 1), but there’s also I Am Legend and Constantine as well. Legend has an understanding of the effect of social isolation that has properly stuck with me since watching it, and while Constantine is one of the best examples of the Vertigo comics aesthetic on film, even if it’s not necessarily the best example of Hellblazer specifically. And now, he appears to be aiming for something more family-friendly than he’s used to, with a reimagining of Little Nemo In Slumberland. And I gotta say, it’s pretty good.
The depiction of the world of dreams can occasionally get bogged down in lore to do with Slumberland’s Bureau Of Subconscious Activities, trying to ape Inception’s video game logic for where we go when we dream, but it manages to avoid tipping over into becoming too self-aware. Actively questioning everything that happens in a fantasy world might be the quickest way to kill any sense of wonder in it, which thankfully isn’t the case here.
Instead, the effects team led by VFX veterans DNEG take that same reality-bending work they put into Inception proper to make Slumberland into quite the appealing universe. A Havana dance hall where the building and the dancers are made of butterflies, a garbage monster truck rolling through a city of glass, the tempestuous Sea Of Nightmares; there’s real imagination put into this. The dance hall in particular looks amazing, with the butterflies giving everything this surreal blur that… for some reason reminded me of what my own dreams looked like. Or, at least, what it feels like to try and remember what I saw after I had woken up. It’s a cool effect.
As for the story, we have the gender-flipped Nemo (Marlow Barkley) retreating into this world in response to her father Peter (Kyle Chandler)’s death, with outlaw Flip (Jason Momoa) as her guide. Momoa here is in easily his goofiest role yet, a wild mix of Jack Sparrow’s Chaotic thrill-seeking and The Dude’s relaxed view of the world around him, and he wears it surprisingly well. Those two sides can sometimes clash, where the cockiness makes the laidback attitude feel more forced than it should, but both as the entry point for the dream world and for an emotional tether for Nemo’s larger story, he’s quite good here. Ditto for Barkley, who takes a bit to get into the swing of things but it looks like she’s having a lot of fun here and that translates well to the audience following suit.
The way it treats dreams as a part of our collective experience is well done also. In the cross-section of Nemo coming to terms with her grief, along with Flip and Chris O’Dowd as her new guardian and Peter’s brother Philip, the dream world and the waking world as not just connected, but necessary for each other. Dreams without reality are dangerous, what should be a brief escape turning into a smothering blanket that can prevent people from having real experiences. While reality without dreams is soulless, lacking in drive or a sense of wonder that would make those real experiences worthwhile. For a story about a young girl learning not to rely so much on her dream life, it manages to deliver that message without getting all condescending about the need to grow up involving abandoning one’s dreams. Sentimental, sure, but balanced with awareness that real life still needs to come first.
I admittedly don’t have any past experience with the original comic strip (I vaguely remember watching a video about the animated film years ago, but that’s about it), but on its own, this makes for a fun psycho-fantasy romp with some nice visuals, solid performances, and an approach to both literal and figurative dreams that is charming yet holistic. It’s a kid-friendly take on Inception, and it works pretty well for what it is.
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