"Slumberland" was a surprisingly competent and fun romp adventure. The film actually had all the basic elements in check to become legendary but it frustratingly falls short of this achievement. And while it had the right actors and right visuals to boot, the writing and the world-building felt a bit too pedestrian or rushed sadly.
When she loses her father (Kyle Chandler, Nemo (Marlow Barkley) is forced to stay with her father's estranged brother Phillip (Chris O'Dowd) who turns out is the complete opposite of her dad. As expected, Nemo misses her dad and would do anything to bring him back. And when she discovers that her father's fantastical stories with a guy named Flip (Jason Momoa) in Slumberland is actually true, she embarks on a journey with Flip to retrieve a mythical pearl in the sea of nightmares that could grant anyone who has it one wish.
With giant flying geese, you know "Slumberland" is one heck of a weird trip. The film revolves around dreams and anything goes in this world (as long as that dream is rated PG that is). And the film's budget and production was able to keep in step to support its fantastical and out of this world visions. In short, one of the film's biggest hooks will be its visuals. The film had certain portions that simply took our breath away literally. On top of that, Jason Momoa and Marlow Barkley had great chemistry together making this a pairing that we didn't expect to come out to be anything special but we're happy our initial apprehensions turned out to be false. Where the film falters was its writing. For us this issue had two key factors. First, Slumberland just didn't make sense and the world-building felt like it needed more time. We couldn't really grasp or appreciate what Slumberland was all about and it seemed it was making up rules on the fly. Second was that while this had a unique concept and premise, the story eventually devolves into something that's been used time and time again that we easily guessed its reveals later in the film less than halfway through.
Slumberland Movie Review: Flipping Fun
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