Slumberland

Nemo (Marlow Barkley) is a young girl who lives with her father (Kyle Chandler) in a lighthouse on the sea where he regales her with stories of his high adventures with his outlaw partner Flip. When Nemo's father is lost at sea following his assistance of a vessel in distress, Nemo is placed in the care of her estranged uncle Phillip (Chris O'Dowd) who's very much a loner and is unsure how to be a parent to Nemo. In Nemo's dreams of her father's lighthouse, she comes across a burly fast talking satyr con-artists who is actually the Flip (Jason Momoa) from her father's stories. Flip tells Nemo that her father had a map of Slumberland, the land where all dreams reside, that tells the location of magical pearls within the Sea of Nightmares with the power to grant any wish. Using her father's map Nemo embarks with her living stuffed pig and Flip on a journey through the dreams of others to find the pearl and reunite with her father, but a Nightmare hunting Nemo based on her fears and Agent Green from Slumberland's Bureau of Subconcious Activities (BOSA) stand in their way.

Announced in March of 2020, Slumberland from producer Peter Chernin and director Francis Lawrence is the latest even release from Netflix. Loosely based on the early 20th century newspaper comic strip Little Nemo by Winsor McCay, the strip is no stranger to adaptation with McCay himself having produced a number of animated shorts featuring his characters, adaptations for theater and opera, an unauthorized obscure adaptation in 1984, and probably most notably the 1989 Japanese-American co-produced anime film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland which survived a lengthy 10 year production cycle only to become a massive financial failure but did eventually get a cult following. In interviews Lawrence stated that his work on more grim works such as I Am Legend, The Hunger Games films and Red Sparrow left him wanting to try his hands at something more light-hearted and optimistic which lead to him choosing Slumberland as his next project. David Guion and Michael Handelman, best known for their work on Dinner for Schmucks and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, write the screenplay and the movie covers very familiar ground, but for me I think it does it well enough.

At the core of Slumberland, the movie is essentially a treasure hunt story with Nemo and Flip using her father's map to travel through various recurring dreams belonging to other people as the dreams of Slumberland possess hidden doors used by BOSA to keep order in the world. While some iconography from the comics and 1989 film is revisited such as the iconic "walking bed", most of the dreams are original creations with a ballroom filled with dancers made of butterflies and a city of glass some particularly well rendered set pieces. Sometimes the dreams can be a little underwhelming with some set pieces being the Canadian wilderness except with giant wild geese or one set that's just a large bathroom not particularly memorable and the BOSA being tailored after the 70s is more odd than it is whimsical. I also wasn't a fan of the design of the Nightmare as it's just a vaguely squid shaped smoke cloud.

In terms of the characters and performances I think the film does pretty well. Marlow Barkley I thought did well playing Nemo and she makes a solid audience proxy for which the dreams bounce off against. Chris O'Dowd is also very good as Nemo's uncle Philip and you feel his struggle being a parent to Nemo because he's been alone for so long. But stealing every scene he's in is Jason Momoa as Flip who gets to play into his comic side with a lot of high energy. While Flip's redesign is about as far from his original as you can get, let's be honest: after years upon years of creepy clown movies and those weird clown sightings in the Carolinas in the early 2010s (Remember those?) I don't think too many people want a clownish protagonist. Momoa is havin an absolute blast playing Flip who's sort of like a less threatening version of Beetlejuice with a air of "wannabe" dashing ladies man coupled with his brash impulsiveness that makes him fun to have an adventure with.

Slumberland is agreeable time killing family viewing that provides a fairly rousing adventure even if it doesn't go quite as full force with the concept as it could've. Overall a decent way to spend two hours.