Wonder Park, 2019.
Featuring the voice talents of Brianna Denski, Kenan Thompson, Ken Jeong, John Oliver, Jennifer Garner, and Matthew Broderick.
SYNOPSIS:
As a young child, ten year old girl named Cameron “June” Bailey (Denski) had always worked on a massive amusement park known as Wonderland that would ensure hours of fun and would have talking animals roaming around. However, after her mother passes away, she discovers her park is actually real and must team up with the animals to protect it from destruction against the evil Chimpanzombies.
Easily the best aspect of Wonder Park is its absolutely gorgeous animation style that you probably picked up on right away if you saw the trailers. Every single scene is loaded with color and it is definitely magnificent to look at. Most animated films these days that look truly spectacular come from Disney or Illumination to name a few, but Paramount Animation makes it clear their style is worth looking at as well.
Unfortunately, there just was not too much of an emotional pull here like the story suggested it would have. Disney or Pixar films tend to heavily focus on the more heartbreaking elements of their stories with movies such as Inside Out and Up tugging at people’s heartstrings. With this feature, it instead seems to put all of its hard work and effort into the animation and visuals instead of a compelling story.
In fact, one of the most disappointing acts on display is the story involved. It actually does manage to conjure up some pretty intriguing ideas early on but slowly begins to follow down a generic route as each minute passes.
In addition, the film feels quite short as well, with a running time of only eighty-five minutes. Just when things start to get a bit entertaining, it all comes to a conclusion rather abruptly, and it would have been nice to have seen this story given a bit more of a boost. Another disappointing quality of Wonder Park is its lack of direction. Everything feels like a string of events thrown together in the hopes of entertaining young children.
Its target audience will more than likely have a fun movie-going experience here, but it would have been much better if there was more to offer. The humor is decent for the most parts with a few jokes that should manage to make most audiences chuckle, but it is definitely dry.
While its animation is undeniably great, Wonder Park is an extremely forgettable experience that does not have any of the thrill that one may hope for. What could have been an emotionally impactful story ends up traversing familiar beats and suffers from a lack of direction.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★★ / Movie: ★★
Caillou Pettis is an enthusiastic film lover and has been one since his youth. You can follow him on Twitter at @CaillouPettis and can contact him by email at caillou@cailloupettis.net.
