Went to see the new kids animated flick Wonder Park. A weird title since the park in the movie is Wonderland… but they can’t name the movie Wonderland since that suggests Lewis Carroll. But then why not call the park in the movie Wonder Park too? Maybe we could ask the director… who got fired from the movie for inappropriate conduct and they didn’t replace him and now nobody has a director credit. Wow.
Anyhow, this movie borrows heavily from Up in that it opens with a moving sequence of genuine human emotions. And then it goes off in lala land and does whatever in heck it wants in ways that don’t really connect emotionally back to that great intro. Only, you know, Up was still a good movie while Wonder Park just goes off a a cliff.
The film starts with a smart little girl and her warm, encouraging family. The mom and daughter create a fantasy theme park in he bedroom, using engineering and creativity to expand the rides throughout the house. It’s very touching and sweet and its great to see a kid – especially a girl – in a kid’s flick encouraged to use her imagination and STEM skills. Then the mom gets sick (never disclosed with what) and has to go away for treatment leading to the daughter’s severe depression and anxiety over her dad getting sick too.
And then the film switched over to a real version of the fantasy park… a park now in ruins and under attack by a rapidly expanding tidal wave of evil toys (chimpanzombies) while a dark storm cloud rages above (depression?). The girl has to work with the surviving good mascots (a narcoleptic bear, a smart British porcupine played by John Oliver, a boar, etc) to help repair the park. To be fair, also largely using ingenuity and engineering.
All the park stuff is clearly an allegory for depression and maybe cancer and I appreciate that. But most of this sequence in this appreciably short film is just noisy chaos. I think it might appeal to the very young in the audience… an audience who won’t understand or appreciate the underlying themes. If the explosion of stuff and nonsense could still appeal to an older crowd, then the flick could have worked for everyone.
So the framing device of this film is genuinely warm and sad and it tries to maintain this allegorically, the majority of the film is rapid fire noise and boredom. Cut all the park stuff out and this would be a wonderful short animated film to put in front of a better, full-length kids movie.
Score: 66