Wonder Park

*** outta *****

3 outta 5

Wonder Park is a completely adequate animated kids movie. Straight up, it doesn’t have the emotional depth of Ralph Breaks the Internet nor does it have the innovative visual pizazz of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Park’s visual style is the same sort of generic Pixar-ish looking animation that other studios copy, probably to trick viewers on Netflix or something into thinking it’s a Pixar movie. While Wonder Park is funny, it isn’t as consistently hilarious as The LEGO Movie. This also sort of steals LEGO movie’s gimmick where it is about the imaginary adventures a kid is making up. But this not terribly unwatchable and there is some fun madcap zaniness to be had, it’s just overall kind of generic. Yet it’s so darn earnest it’s kind of hard to hate.

Young June (Sofia Mali) loves to construct elaborate rides and designs for her imaginary park called Wonderland. But when her mom (Jennifer Garner) gets sick, she is left with her dad (Matthew Broderick). Eventually, June (Brianna Denski, the slightly older version) literally throws the plans for Wonderland in the fire. Ditching her trip to Math Camp, June magically ends up in Wonderland, populated by the bear Boomer (Ken Hudson Campbell), the porcupine Steve (John Oliver), warthog Greta (Mila Kunis) and beavers, Gus (Keenan Thompson) and Cooper (Ken Jeong). It turns out a darkness has spread over the land which is now infested by ChimpanZombies and the hero of the park, the nice chimp Peanut (Norbert Leo Butz), has disappeared. Now she is determined to save Peanut, return the park to it’s former glory and get back to her dad.

The opening has June as a little kid playing in her imaginary wonderland but then she finds out her mom is sick and it time jumps while the mom is being taken care of. The mom just completely disappears from the household for years which is a little odd for someone to be away that long. It is entirely possible the mom went to prison or an insane alyssum and they just told June that she was “sick”, or the mom had such a terrible disease she had to be quarantined for years. Oddly, the mom probably the least amount of dialogue out of the main characters but since she is voiced by Jennifer Garner, she receives first billing in the end credits. The actress who voices June ends up in 5^th or 6^th billing.

The central story, that June must learn to explore her imagination, is bland but not bad, although internal emotional catharsis via imaginary friend adventure is done extremely better in LEGO Movie. Her disbelieving in Wonderland is tied up with her mom’s sickness so it generates easy, and cheap, sympathy. It is a tad odd June returning to her dad at the end is meant to be a win when it would probably be for her best developmental interests that she goes to Math Camp with her friends.

A central conceit is June whispers to her stuffed animal chimp and then in the Wonderland imagination word he carries out her actions. How Peanut reacts is unintentionally disconcerting as it is like he’s possessed by voices inside his head. Also, the characters say “Splendiferous!” which is technically a real word but strange. Maybe the kid randomly learned the word “splendiferous” and kept repeating it. Checking the Webster’s dictionary website, “splendiferous” is defined as “extraordinarily or showily impressive,” which somewhat accurately defines this movie’s worst qualities. When this is bad, it can be overwhelming random colourful images and shouting.

Wonder Park is at its best when things get silly. There are asides that are pretty great, like when June imagines her dad all by himself in the house and potentially wasting away in a pile of discarded pizza boxes and absentmindedly sticking a fork in the toaster. Another fun bit is when Steve is introduced handing out water bottles and says “Did you hear the one about dehydration? No. you didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about dehydration!” as Oliver delivers the line with the smarmy oomph he does on Last Week Tonight. He’s the MVP of the movie as Steve is mostly annoyed or terrified. He is smitten with Greta the boar that allows Oliver to pine in an amusingly wistful way. There’re also some funny lines from Thompson’s and Jeong’s beaver buddies. Peanut the hero is mostly dull when he’s sane but the best stuff is when June finds him hiding and he’s passing his time organizing candy by colour. Boomer the bear has a fun scene where he gets stuck on top of a roller coaster as attempts to save him go rather wrong. The best scenes are probably anything involving the hordes of ChimpanZombies. They bounce up and down singing a creepy happy song while wrecking anything in their path. One bit has June almost escaping as she makes eye contact with one and then, after a brief beat, it sends her crashing to the ground.

Wonder Park isn’t the magically inventive piece of entertainment it is trying to celebrate. But it’s not a terrible movie. Just kind of rote. But it has its charms and rampaging ChimpanZombies so it’s good for something.