"Wonder Park" movie review: Watch it or skip it?
Connect
First off, let me say that I should’ve done some research before picking this week’s movie. With Captain Marvel still playing in Dolby Atmos and Imax, I just chose whatever was going to be premiering on one of the bigger screens today. This movie was a complete mess and I regret watching it! With that out of the way, let’s get to it. My review.
The movie started off great, it had humor, adventure, great animation. But 10 minutes in I realized this was not a kid’s movie that even adults can enjoy. I would recommend this if you have kids 6 and under. Any older and I think they will be extremely bored. Okay, so where do we start? The movie is filled with played out clichés. A kid’s imaginary place, a sick parent, the kid growing up and abandoning the imaginary place, being sad, coming back to the imaginary place, finds happiness in the imaginary place and everything else in her life falls into place.
The animation was done extremely well, it had that Toy Story type of feel but more realistic. There was so much attention to detail that I could even see all of the wrinkles in the animal’s noses. It was a colorful movie, but it didn’t look as aesthetically pleasing as Coco. The jokes were ok, I chuckled a few times. But they weren’t as clever as some of the jokes as let’s say The Emperor’s New Groove (old school reference), Shrek, or The Lego Movie. The one thing it did have going for it was physical comedy in the form of the habits and sounds the animal characters made, (random bouts of narcolepsy, snorting).
The story was pretty weak, it was all over the place and the transitions were really clunky. One minute the story is taking place in the kid’s household and on the street with all the neighborhood kids, and the next minute were surrounded by a bunch of wimpy animals who are extremely sensitive to everything and have very little real personality that translates to laughs or emotional investment. At the end of the movie I felt like I just wasted an hour and a half of my life. Someone waiting for the restroom in the lobby even told my girlfriend “This movie was the dumbest thing I have ever seen!, I go to a lot of these with my kids and they’re usually good, but this was just dumb!” I felt the same way because I usually enjoy movies like Minions, Lego Movie, Inside out, etc.., but this had nothing to offer.
Long story short, the plot was all over the place, the transitions from scene to scene were clunky, the jokes fell flat, and the movie had no sense of direction.
So should you watch it or skip it? I would skip it. Even if you have a toddler, skip this movie. You are not going to laugh, you are not going to cry, you are not going to care. This is the type of movie you play for your kid’s (2-6yr) when it’s on Netflix while you’re doing chores.
Final Score: 3/10