Wonder Park is a beautiful, well made film that misses the mark

Imagine you’re invited to a party. It’s supposed to be a lively, social affair that bills itself as a loose, chatty affair. When you get there the party seems like it’s going according to plan. The guests are interesting and the conversation is quite fun, but then the host settles down and turns the party into a time share sales pitch. You’ve had fun at the party up until now-and all of the guests are still there, so you gamely sit down. It’s a beautiful sales pitch with a bit of guilt, done with panache and tons of personality. When the sales pitch ends you’re left slightly gape jawed because you came in expecting a fun, happy-go-lucky party, but instead got a slightly down beat gathering that was hosted by a tween goth wanna be.

That is the feeling I had when I left Wonder Park.

It’s like going to see Minions, thinking it’s a film about lovable yellow creatures; but 10 minutes into the film you learn they have jaundice.

Wonder Park sells itself as a child’s escape to an amusement park run by anthropomorphic animals. And for a while it’s the amusement park film you’ve seen. The film looks gorgeous. Its animation is stunning, at times looking like a hybrid stop animation and computer animation. It has a grand scope and characters that look like you’ve seen them before, but also seem like original tour guides to a place that you want to go.

June is the young girl who creates Wonder Park. She and her mother have a vivid imagination and it’s their go-to place to play. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes into the film her mother get sick, presumably Cancer and has to go away to the hospital for treatment. And here comes the time share presentation.

It’s not that serious subject matters don’t have a place in children’s entertainment. They do, but what Wonder Park did was the exact opposite of Inside/Out did and I completely blame Bing Bong. The time when Bing Bong floats away into the abyss is a gut punch that people can relate to. Inside/Out was a great comedy with a dramatic gut punch. The kick is that Inside/Out billed itself as a comedy.

Wonder Park bills itself as an adventure/comedy and doesn’t accomplish either category.  It has elements of adventure that do work, but when the film is being adventurous it flips back to sad panda June all too quickly. Steve, the porcupine, voiced by John Oliver does manage to get in a couple of laughs and physical comedy bits, but they’re not worth the price of admission.

In the end June’s mother (spoiler alert) does come back home and audience members over 10 will be glad to head to the exits. Our 9 year old did enjoy the film, but he stopped talking about it by bedtime and didn’t talk about it with his friends. That’s quite different than his other reactions, like for Mary Poppins Returns, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Teen Titans GO! To The Movies or a couple others where we had to distract him with shiny object in order to get him to stop talking about it.

Wonder Park is a decent enough time waster for a rainy day on TV. It’s best if you save your movie theatre money for something else this spring.