Once upon a time, Pixar had the kind of winning streak that most companies could only dream of. The studio didn’t just maintain a robust production line that won over both critics and crowds, they also managed to change our concept of what animation could achieve as an art form. Radically expansive visuals were matched with surprising, weighty ideas, conjuring the kind of magic that had been largely absent from Disney’s output in the years prior.
While many blamed the ensuing fade on Covid, in truth it had already started before then. Like the rest of the industry, the company had become overly reliant on sequels, with the four years before 2020 seeing one original versus four follow-ups and as cinemas shuttered, their latest offering, Onward, was middling enough to suggest that even superfans should be concerned about the future. It’s been a case of ongoing underwhelm ever since, a low point reached by this year’s Elio, a patchworked mess that had the lowest opening ever for a Pixar film (their only bright spot Inside Out 2 has left their upcoming slate looking predictably sequel-heavy).
It’s hard not to see Netflix’s pre-Thanksgiving adventure In Your Dreams as an attempt to fill the gap both visually and thematically, the film sticking closely to the Pixar playbook. It’s not up to their one-time standard, but it’s more engaging than the average streaming cartoon and a damn sight better than what Netflix gave us last year, the remarkably ugly Spellbound, which tried and miserably failed to give us a Disney princess copycat.
In Your Dreams is more reminiscent of Inside Out with shades of Coco; a quest narrative that takes place in a world close to our own, in this instance the world of dreams. Like Spellbound, it’s also a tale of children trying to deal with parents whose marriage is on the rocks, a never not relevant or welcome conversation to introduce and assist with. Stevie is a girl whose dreams are of better days, when the family dynamic was operating as it should (“like one of those happy families you see at the beginning of a disaster movie” she says) but even her consciousness knows that something is wrong, turning her dreams into nightmares and bringing her back to the less idyllic real world. A rather convoluted set of circumstances leads her and younger brother Elliot to a book about the Sandman who can allegedly turn dreams into reality and with their mother threatening to leave the family home for a new job, the pair are propelled into a journey inside their minds.
The aesthetic of In Your Dreams, especially that of the human characters, is so unavoidably Pixar-coded that it would feel shameless were it not the brainchild of Alex Woo, the writer-director who was once a story artist on many of their defining titles, including Ratatouille and Wall-E. This is still very much the Netflix mockbuster version of that but it’s considerably more convincing than many of their junkier lower-tier efforts. Woo and co-writer Erik Benson, another ex-Pixar bod, do a decent enough job of trying to also bring with them the same style of script – life lessons delivered without a heavy hand woven into a dynamic caper – and while their trademark emotional soar never arrives, there are worthy observations here.
Like in Inside Out, where we were taught that sadness must exist alongside happiness, here we’re told that nightmares can help strengthen us in the same way that dreams can lead to inspiration. It’s not exactly groundbreaking but it has more texture than a simple “family is important” message and along with the relatively rare decision to give a brother-sister relationship priority, it helps to slightly distinguish this from the pack. What they can’t quite transfer is the wit, the film coming up short when it tries to amuse rather than teach us. An inevitable sidekick, this time a stuffed toy come to life voiced by Craig Robinson, is aggressively unfunny while the various snapshots of dream worlds are lacking in anything truly silly enough to make us smile.
Woo, though, is a talent that Netflix would be wise to keep in its animated stable and with a stronger script and less derivative concept (there are also notes of Coraline in here), one could imagine something better in his future. At a runtime that almost pushes it into more of an extended episode than a movie (advertised as 90 but finishing at under 80), this is a little too slight and breezy to really make much of an impression, like a dream you’ll forget as soon as you open your eyes.
