At a glance, Slumberland comes across as a complete visual mess that seeks to blow its audience's mind with a lot of absurd visuals and flashy colors. That would be an accurate assessment, but it's also a charming fantasy adventure for kids that might become a favorite of its 10-year-old target audience.
Written by Winsor McCay, Little Nemo in Slumberland was a beloved comic strip that ran from 1905 to 1927. The strip was celebrated for its ability to play with the format and break the mold. I Am Legend and Constantine director Francis Lawrence takes the broad strokes of the comic's narrative and boils it down into a 117-minute adventure.
Slumberland follows an 11-year-old girl named Nemo, who lives an idyllic little life as a lighthouse keeper with her father. When her father is tragically lost at sea, she is dragged against her will into the big city to live with her dull uncle. Nemo's life is turned upside down when she suddenly begins entering a fantastical world every time she drifts off to sleep. Enter Flip, a self-professed outlaw primary character in Nemo's favorite bedtime stories who claims to be able to help her see her dad again. Flip and Nemo must complete a dangerous journey across multiple people's dreams, evade the local dream authorities, and find a treasure that even Nemo's dad couldn't.
Slumberland feels like a lot of other projects. It's a direct adaptation, but the film has a relatively easy time reducing unnecessary lore and building a more easygoing dreamlike plot structure. A little kid who finds themselves guided by an enigmatic fantasy creature into a wondrous world is fairly common in the world of children's films. Slumberland has a weird way of handling stakes. It's not a war like Narnia or a charming jaunt like Where the Wild Things Are. Nemo is doing everything she does to avoid having to move on from the sudden death of her father. Everyone keeps telling her to process her grief and start her new life. She gives up the things she loves and exclusively pursues her dream journey to see her dad. If the audience gives much thought to the narrative, it's extremely sad. A dead parent is par for the course in this kind of film, but Slumberland is happy to consistently leave the audience wondering whether the supposedly whimsical fantasy adventure is making every character's life worse.
Slumberland is a shockingly controversial film. It'll be entirely up to the viewer whether the imagination on display connects or not. The dream sequences are overwhelmingly digital backlot shots, in which the entire world aside from the actors are added in digitally. It looks pretty good, especially for a film that isn't going to theaters, but this kind of green-screen heavy visual style has become common enough to alienate some audiences. When a work claims to be working in dreams, there are often problems of imagination. Everyone remembers Inception, in which the infinite power of dreams was used almost exclusively to spawn faceless men for the heroes to shoot. Slumberland isn't as weak in that department. There are a few fascinating fantasy worlds to explore, the film pokes fun at some of the inherent absurdity of dreams, and it even manages to pull off a couple of jokes about the type of person who would have each dream. It could all go a lot deeper, but it's not exactly surface-level either.
The cast is one of the main draws of the film. Most of the attention Slumberland received in the early phases came due to Jason Momoa's appearance in the trailer. Momoa is a joy to watch as Flip. He dresses like Willy Wonka by way of Rob Zombie, he talks like Beetlejuice, and he's a new type of role for Momoa to demonstrate more diverse talents. Opposite him is Marlow Barkley, who is probably best known for her role in ABC's Single Parents. Child actors are often the downfall of projects like this, but she's a solid performer. She takes a sort of straight-man role that works really well against Momoa's whimsical pirate gimmick. The surprise success of the film is Chris O'Dowd, who portrays Nemo's boring uncle with a shocking amount of humanity. O'Dowd is a stellar comedic performer, but he's excellent here with barely any jokes to tell. The cast works, providing a solid foundation on which to hang all the computer-generated decorations.
Slumberland probably won't change the world. It's not the kind of dream one would forget before they make it out of bed, but it's also not the kind that changes one's life forever. It's harmless fun, a showcase for a new up-and-coming talent, and a new challenge for a beloved movie star. Director Francis Lawrence has a talent for finding the heart in a piece of source material and turning it into a charming fantasy adventure. Slumberland is available on Netflix now, and it's well worth checking out. It won't put you to sleep, but it's not the film anyone's been dreaming of either.
Slumberland
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- Release Date
- November 18, 2022
Slumberland is a 2022 Netflix original film directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Jason Momoa, Chris O'Dowd, Kyle Chandler, and Marlow Barkley. The film is based on the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip created by Winsor McCay. In the film, a young girl named Nemo awakens in the Land Between Dreams.