Director: Alex Woo
Writers: Alex Woo, Erik Benson
Stars: Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Elias Jenssen, Craig Robinson
Synopsis: In Your Dreams is a comedy adventure about Stevie and her brother Elliot, who journey into the absurd landscape of their own dreams. If the siblings can withstand a snarky stuffed giraffe, zombie breakfast foods, and the queen of nightmares, the Sandman will grant them their ultimate dream come true…the perfect family.
The opening scene of Alex Woo’s In Your Dreams immediately grabbed my attention only by a smart employment of Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” as a family prepares breakfast in a relatively fast-paced fashion. If you want to ensure your audience is locked in from the minute it begins, the song is perfect, especially as it punctuates a rather chaotic family dynamic between Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport), her brother Elliot (Elias Janssen), and her parents (voiced by Simu Liu and Cristin Milioti). The familial relationship seems joyful and loving, until, we realize, this occurred many years ago, and their current bond has been fractured for some time.
Before we even get a sense of the gist of the story, it becomes clear that, by the end of the film, every “uncertainty” plaguing Stevie’s life, whether in her mother potentially accepting a new job at a city far away from their home or their parents likely eyeing a separation as the opportunity of a new professional endeavor tears the family from the inside, would be resolved satisfactorily. Woo and co-writer Erik Benson tread on incredibly familiar territories, and don’t do much to reinvent what’s already been treated in way better movies than this one. That said, this isn’t inherently a problem, because most family films tend to repeat the same storylines, through different thematic and visual variations, for kids to grasp complex subjects they will understand more deeply later in life. Yet, the execution from Woo in his story feels incredibly lazy, and that’s the biggest issue plaguing the core of In Your Dreams.
Take, for instance, a sequence where Stevie and Elliot go to a pizzeria that has absolutely no correlation whatsoever to Freddy Fazbear’s. No, sir, where are you getting this idea from? Instead of creating an animated world that feels distinct and is far removed from known IPs and other familiar designs, Woo’s movie consistently reappropriates stuff we know from popular culture and tries to pass it off as its own. At some point, Stevie and Elliot are in a dream where their bed rides an attraction with a visual palette similar to Disney’s “It’s a Small World,” while Not Freddy Fazbear haunts them by singing a “creepy” version of The Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha,” a song that was already dated when it released to the world.
Even sequences of great creativity, such as a chase scene in the protagonists’ own dreams with their bed acting as a horse of sorts, have obvious callbacks to classic films that don’t feel earned, such as the most famous image from Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extraterrestrial. Credit where credit is due, though, the setpiece builds to that moment, and Woo does slightly get away with it, since E.T. is also about larger-than-life dreams for a child who discovered a world he didn’t even know existed before meeting the alien that will change his life. Still, it indicates a larger problem that the movie can’t effectively transcend – everything looks and feels like reheated nachos.
Even Elliot’s favorite plush toy, Tony Baloney (Craig Robinson), who comes to life in their dreams, is totally not Donkey, and Robinson is absolutely not in any way imitating the same vocal patterns as Eddie Murphy’s portrayal of his most iconic animated character. Again, there isn’t a single original idea in Woo’s film, whether in its micro details in tracking a divided family who will eventually bond through their subconscious, or in its macro world as the siblings must plow through Nightmara (Gia Carides), the figure representing all of their deepest, darkest, nightmares before reaching the Sandman (Omid Djalili), who promises to make all of their biggest dreams come true.
I don’t even need to describe anything else, because you probably know that the Sandman is not what he seems, and the same can also be said for Nightmara. There is a deeper moral to appreciate when both mythical figures are stripped down to their most human characteristics. However, Woo doesn’t delve as deeply as he can in making these characters feel as textured and three-dimensional as the telegraphed relationship between Stevie and Elliot. Yes, both are familiar, but their dynamic is at least entertaining enough to make us want to see their journey through, regardless of whether it’s (too) easy to figure out where it’s heading.
With all that being said, In Your Dreams is neatly animated in its attempt to replicate the same “quest for realism” as Pixar does, until it surprises through a staggering maximalist shift when the characters dream of “dynamite fists.” What that entails won’t be spoiled in this review, but this is where Woo frees itself from its conventional shackles and, on some occasions, gets surprisingly invigorating and creative. One wishes the entire movie were like this, because In Your Dreams rarely attempts to surpass its conventional narrative and character beats, instead preferring to stay within the limited imagination and references it wants to bathe in.
Kids will undoubtedly enjoy it as a mild distraction. As a result, the movie will likely achieve massive success on Netflix. But will it have the same unexpected cultural longevity as KPop Demon Hunters, which became a worldwide phenomenon in the weeks after its initial release on the streamer and is now positioned to be a major awards contender? That is the question of the hour, and there’s only one way to find out…
