‘In Your Dreams’ review: Netflix family animation proves something of a snoozefest

Dir: Alex Woo. US. 2025. 91mins

Looking for a magical repair for her dad and mom’ impending separation, a perfectionist tween will get her want answered in surprising methods in Alex Woo’s function directorial debut. The heartfelt animation In Your Desires follows the woman and her pesky youthful brother as they uncover that they will enter the identical dreamworld and probably observe down The Sandman, who can grant their want that their mum and pa keep collectively. However neither the fantastical premise nor the concepts round divorce and sibling rivalry are well-developed on this disappointingly unimaginative image.

Slowed down by juvenile jokes and an underwhelming narrative

Netflix will launch In Your Desires in US theatres on November 7 earlier than placing the movie on its platform every week later. The story ought to attraction principally to youthful viewers, and little doubt the studio hopes to lure household audiences through the holidays. (In Your Desires’ principal competitors would be the forthcoming Zootopia 2.) Craig Robinson, Simu Liu and Cristin Milioti are the most important names within the voice solid, nevertheless it appears protected to imagine this is not going to have the identical cultural influence as fellow Netflix animation KPop Demon Hunters.

Twelve-year-old midwesterner Stevie (voiced by Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) adores her dad and mom (Liu and Milioti), though she harbours a grudge towards her eight-year-old brother Elliot (Elias Janssen), satisfied that the household was happier earlier than he was born. She notices that her dad and mom are distant with each other, a byproduct of economic woes. When her mum will get an interview for a promising job lots of of miles away — and her father expresses misgivings about shifting — Stevie fears it might imply they’ll break up.

The reply to her anxieties comes from an unlikely place: a e book she and her brother discover a couple of legendary being referred to as The Sandman. Conjuring him by way of an incantation, Stevie and Elliot are whisked away right into a shared unconscious the place they confront their most frequent goals but in addition start a journey to find The Sandman.

Woo, a longtime Pixar story artist who fashioned unbiased animation firm Kuku Studios a couple of decade in the past, attracts from his personal childhood to inform this story of a teen grappling along with her dad and mom’ potential divorce. In Your Desires is most affecting when it touches on the confusion and ache that youngsters expertise when their sense of stability feels ripped away. As Stevie and Elliot navigate the logistics of the dreamworld, what hits hardest is the characters’ desperation to discover a answer to their drawback — and, extra poignantly, their fragile perception that they alone can save their dad and mom’ marriage.

Sadly, In Your Desires will get slowed down by juvenile jokes and an underwhelming narrative. Between the tedious fart humour and the lacklustre quips, the script (written by Woo and co-director Erik Benson) fails to be particularly humorous. However even the seemingly limitless potentialities of the dreamworld — each visually and storywise — don’t encourage a lot delight or inventiveness. As an alternative, Woo falls again on predictable cinematic reference factors, dabbling in mediocre Spielbergian marvel and riffing on acquainted movies like The Shining.

The siblings rapidly deduce that the problem might be staying asleep lengthy sufficient to make their approach to the mysterious Sandman. (Every time they get up as a consequence of “dying” within the dreamworld, they should primarily begin over, a la Edge Of Tomorrow.) Alongside the best way, they’ll encounter Baloney Tony, Elliot’s beloved giraffe stuffed animal, who’s alive of their unconscious and, as a result of he’s voiced by Robinson, a wisecracking sensible aleck. The comedic actor does his greatest with the meagre traces he’s given, however Tony looks like little greater than the compulsory wacky/cute aspect character that seems in each animated household movie.

In Your Desires’ animation fashion emphasises a practical search for its human characters, rising extra vibrant every time Stevie and Elliot reenter the dreamworld. And Woo reveals a twist about midway by way of that forces highstrung Stevie to reassess her anxious want for her dad and mom to stay collectively — and, additionally, her relationship along with her brother, who Janssen performs as the everyday annoying youthful sibling who drives her sister loopy.

Though the image’s undemanding method will in all probability frustrate teenagers and early twentysomethings, the movie ends on an appreciably nuanced message for youngsters about fashionable households and the worth of residing in the true world, versus clinging to unrealistic goals. These are significant classes, even when one needs the movie accompanying them was extra enchanting.