Slumberland

This weekend, Slumberland was released on Netflix. Slumberland follows a 10-year-old girl, Nemo, as she explores the dreamworld of Slumberland with eccentric outlaw Flip to find a way to see her late father again.

This movie was a fun enjoyable little film. It has fun characters and an interesting premise. This movie does a great job of explaining a difficult concept. The film is all about grief and how to process loss while keeping the film light and fun. The film takes us through Nemo's journey on her grief of losing her father as well as how the grief impacts her. As she goes through Slumberland, she can learn how to process her grief and live with it healthily. The film also does a great job with world-building as it sets up the whole world of Slumberland and all of the rules and concepts that go along with it. The way that Slumberland is introduced is really well done and is just an enjoyable place to set an adventure in. Jason Mamoa absolutely steals the movie as his character Flip is a lot of fun as you get to see Mamoa's typical personality style while also getting a bit more of an eccentric trait to the character. Every scene he is in is just so much fun to watch and he really just adds a lot to this film. This film also has some surprisingly emotional moments throughout specifically at the beginning with the death of Nemo's father as well as towards the end. The characters show some really strong emotions and give some great emotional scenes.

There is one thing that isn't good or bad but is important to note. IMDB has musical as one of the genres of this movie. However, this movie is not a musical. Don't go into this movie to see Jason Mamoa sing (Like I did) because it does not happen.

However, there are a few things that held the film back for me. The first thing is that the film slowed down quite a bit in the middle act, especially at the part in the Dream Bureau. This sequence just seems to bring the movie to a halt and just feels so bogged down. It feels this way for about 10 minutes then begins to pick up again. I also found that several characters were unnecessary and didn't add anything to the story specifically the bureau agent and the kids at school. The bureau agent just seems like she is there to be a force against Nemo and Flip and the kid at the school that tries to befriend Nemo just seems kind of there with his character subplot going nowhere.

Overall, this is a fun film that has a great concept and world and manages to address a difficult concept but just had a couple of things on a story level that kept the movie from being great.

Score: 7/10 Grade: B Recommendation: Stream it