Wonder Park (2019)

Wonder Park, like many animated films, isn't about what it appears to be on the surface. It is about grief, how we deal with loss, and how we hold on to ourselves during such a crisis of self. But Wonder Park is also heavy handed and rather uninspiring. It has ambitions that it doesn't live up to. And in the end it isn't as entertaining as a movie about a magical theme park filled with animals should be.

There is an overly generic feeling to Wonder Park. Little about the art or character design inspires any sort of... well, wonder. The characters are unlikely to inspire the kind of love children of all ages feel for their favourite animated characters. I couldn't even tell you their names. Everything is generic at Wonder Park, like a low rent version of something greater.

Wonder Park also falls into a rather common trap American animation often falls into of over emphasizing everything. Every roller-coaster is unbelievably steep, every ferris-wheel dangles from the most precarious peek, etc. Yes the point is that we are in a young girl's imagination, but the film goes to great lengths to make her creativity based on real engineering and so seeing her fantasies be so fantastic feels dishoneset.

But the biggest sin of Wonder Park is just how uninspiring it is. The story is rather pedestrian and predictable. Like the design, like the characters, the story of Wonder Park is overly common. It isn't outright boring but it is rather uninteresting.

So despite what Wonder Park could have been it just isn't there. I think there is something here which, like a much superior film Inside Out, could have truly explored in a deep way, the emotions and resiliency of children. But it doesn't get anywhere near there.

Wonder Park
Starring: Jennifer Gardner, Matthew Broaderick, Keenan Thompson, Ken Jeong, Mina Kulis, John Oliver
Director: Dylan Brown
Writers: Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec