CNN
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A film about goals turns into the stuff of nightmares in Netflix’s completely misguided “Slumberland,” an try to construct a sprawling fantasy journey from the bones of the early-Twentieth-century newspaper caricature. Most notable as a automobile for Jason Momoa, this wannabe spectacle from “The Starvation Video games” director Francis Lawrence serves up plenty of particular results desperately in the hunt for a narrative.
The plot begins with a well-recognized kid-movie setup: A younger lady named Nemo (Marlow Barkley, in a gender swap from the comedian) residing in a lighthouse away from the world together with her caring father (Kyle Chandler). When dad is misplaced at sea, she’s despatched to reside together with her buttoned-up uncle (Chris O’Dowd) within the huge metropolis, discovering an escape in her goals.
The realm of goals is described as “a world with no consequence,” however as constructed, that is available in a film with no clear inventive compass, proving extra mystifying than magical. Alternately zany and sappy, the previous impulse is embodied by Momoa’s Flip, who resides within the dream world and, together with his horns and hat, resembles an unholy cross of the Mad Hatter, the Ghost of Christmas Current and a refugee from the island of Dr. Moreau.
Nemo and Flip go on a sequence of adventures in pursuit of a treasured artifact, with the promise that by journeying by the goals of others, she’ll in some way have the ability to see her father once more. Alongside the way in which, they run afoul of one thing known as the Bureau of Unconscious Actions, a surreal forms that sees Flip as an outlaw.
Netflix has already made a giant guess on goals with “The Sandman,” however the common conceit right here broadly brings to thoughts the basic movie “Time Bandits,” though any comparability largely simply displays how exhausting that mixture of caprice and irreverence is to grasp, and the way conspicuously “Slumberland” falls wanting it.
Maybe foremost, it’s troublesome to find out for whom “Slumberland” is meant, apart from Momoa followers and a youthful viewers numbed sufficient by videogames, maybe, to be dazzled by the ingenious manufacturing design and untroubled by the thinness of the story.
Streaming providers are clearly dazzled by the advertising worth of star energy, and Momoa – who appeared reverse one other younger lady the dreary “Candy Lady” final 12 months, in addition to the sooner sequence “Frontier” – as all the time offers a muscular dose of it. These attributes really feel wasted, nonetheless, within the surreal confines of “Slumberland,” which, as amusement-park-type names go, doesn’t even qualify as a pleasant place to go to.
“Slumberland” premieres November 18 on Netflix.