Slumberland
A movie about dreams ends up being right stuff of problems in Netflix’s entirely misguided “Slumberland,” an effort to construct a vast dream journey from the bones of the early-20th-century paper comic strip. The majority of notable as a car for Jason Momoa, this wannabe phenomenon from “The Hunger Gamings” director Francis Lawrence serves up lots of special results seriously searching for a story.
The story starts with a familiar kid-movie setup: A girl called Nemo (Marlow Barkley, in a gender swap from the comic) living in a lighthouse far from the globe with her caring daddy (Kyle Chandler). When papa is lost mixed-up, she’s sent to live with her buttoned-up uncle (Chris O’Dowd) in the big city, locating an escape in her dreams.
The world of dreams is referred to as “a globe without any repercussion,” yet as created, that comes in a film with no clear imaginative compass, proving more mystifying than enchanting. At the same time wacky as well as absurd, the former impulse is symbolized by Momoa’s Flip, that lives in the dream world and also, with his horns and also hat, resembles an unholy cross of the Mad Hatter, the Ghost of Xmas Present and an evacuee from the island of Dr. Moreau.
Nemo as well as Flip go on a collection of journeys in pursuit of a valuable artifact, with the pledge that by journeying with the imagine others, she’ll somehow be able to see her daddy again. Along the road, they contravene of something called the Bureau of Subconscious Activities, an unique bureaucracy that sees Flip as an outlaw.
Netflix has actually currently made a huge bank on dreams with “The Sandman,” but the basic conceit right here broadly brings to mind the traditional film “Time Bandits,” although any kind of contrast mostly simply mirrors how hard that mix of whimsy and also irreverence is to understand, and also exactly how notably “Slumberland” falls short of it.
Maybe primary, it’s tough to identify for whom “Slumberland” is intended, other than Momoa fans as well as a more youthful target market numbed sufficient by videogames, probably, to be impressed by the innovative production layout as well as undisturbed by the slimness of the tale.
Streaming solutions are certainly impressed by the advertising value of star power, as well as Momoa– who showed up contrary an additional young girl the bleak “Sweet Lady” last year, as well as the earlier collection “Frontier”– as constantly provides a muscle dose of it. Those qualities feel thrown away, nonetheless, in the surreal boundaries of “Slumberland,” which, as amusement-park-type names go, does not also certify as a great area to check out.
“Slumberland” premieres November 18 on Netflix.