I went into this movie blind, not knowing anything about it. And when I learned it’s a fantasy story, I hoped I would end up loving it because it’s been a while since we got a truly great fantasy film. And the story got me hyped, I thought there were elements of something magical (even if it kind of reminded me of The NeverEnding Story (1984)), and I was hoping for it to pay off. And it did but only halfway? The rest, unfortunately, got lost in this overabundant mess of CGI.

Let me clarify – Slumberland is a beautiful movie visually, for the most part. At least for the first 30 minutes or so. But after that, the film suffers from everything being CGI, so nothing stands out anymore. It’s like if you order a really spicy meal at a restaurant. The first couple of bites will stand out because it’s new and spicy, and you weren’t expecting to be that spicy. But after several other bites, your mouth will go numb, and since you know what to expect now, it will eventually not surprise you as much. But unlike spice, CGI (and especially CGI that looks kind of “samey”) is something many movies still use because it’s easy and cheaper, and it shows. No matter how beautiful the scenery gets, deep down, you know it’s too shiny; too pretty, and therefore it’s all fake. And that took me out of most of the film. Maybe that is just a “me thing”, but I would rather see practical effects/sets, no matter how laughable they can sometimes be, than CGI effects that make the film feel the same throughout it.

This film is centred around three performers – Jason Momoa, Marlow Barkley and Chris O’Dowd. And I feel like they all deserve to be mentioned, at least briefly. Since Marlow is the youngest one, I was not familiar with her at all, but I thought she did a great job. If her character didn’t click, the movie would have fallen flat. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and Marlow gave a really solid performance. I was happy to see Jason Momoa going for something new, pushing “the silly” in his performance because we don’t often see him as silly, but I thought it mostly worked. But the one who truly surprised me was Chris. He gave probably the best performance of his career (at least from the films of his I saw) and crushed this role. At first, it seems unlikely, given his role is the “boring one”, the responsible boring adult who has the most boring life/hobby possible. And then, the film starts to unwrap his character, and the highlight, the peak of his performance, was him watching a video of his youth and talking about his brother. I wasn’t expecting Chris to ground this film that much, but he did, and that was the shining light in an otherwise vast sea of CGI that gave me hope. I guess what I am trying to say is; we all know and love Chris O’Dowd as the funny, quirky guy. But goddammit, somebody needs to cast him in a proper drama because there is way more to him than what we have seen. I believe that even Slumberland barely scratched the surface of his acting capabilities.

And unfortunately, I could write the same about this entire movie. Slumberland has nice visuals and an intriguing story with a positive message, but… The whole thing feels like it’s only scratching the surface. It never dares to go too deep (besides that one scene with Chris), and we could have used more scenes like that and less CGI. I understand the primary purpose of this film was to be as imaginative as possible, given it is “Kidception“, but the lack of anything creative besides CGI was ultimately where the film failed for me.

If it sounds to you like I am hung up on the CGI element of this film, you are correct because most of it doesn’t look even that believable. So if the majority of your movie consists of questionable CGI and you want to tell this touching family story with a message about not losing that childish spark, it’s hard to focus on that when everything surrounding it looks fake. It’s a shame Slumberland couldn’t have a bigger budget with somebody at the helm insisting on trying some practical stuff, as that could have given us an amazing film. Instead, we ended up with something that will get forgotten about amidst thousands of Netflix movies that should have been better, but they were not.

Overall, Slumberland is a decent film with great performances by our main duo and one excellent performance by Chris O’Dowd. The overreliance on the cheap/samey looking CGI is, unfortunately, what kills a lot of momentum for this film to do anything meaningful, like stay with you for longer than a couple of hours. I get why, for many filmmakers, fantasy equals CGI nowadays (any CGI is still cheaper than sets, locations etc.), but I miss those days of fantasy movies at least striving for something bigger. And I secretly wish somebody who wields power in Hollywood would bring that genre back “properly”. Say what you want about Game of Thrones (2011 – 2019) or how it ended, but in its prime, it was the fantasy show to beat. And a big part of it was the fact they shot on real locations with as many real props as possible.

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke