If you were to take the wide-eyed wonder of a Steven Spielberg, the impish mischief of a Joe Dante, plus the vibrant visuals of prime Pixar and somehow blitz them together in a Magic Bullet blender, the resulting concoction might well resemble Sketch , an audaciously gonzo first feature by Seth Worley.
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Although the tween tale may be admittedly lacking in singular originality, it more than compensates for all its borrowed bits with a Skittles-hued sugar rush of a live-action romp, with an unusual take on family therapy in which a 10-year-old girl’s grief manifests in violent drawings come to life.
Working with an engaging, spirited cast and a talented visual effects crew, Worley, a VFX aficionado whose prior directorial output has been mainly in the field of corporate-branded videos, turns out a hard-to-resist, all-ages crowd tickler that seems certain to land distribution on the heels of its Toronto International Film Festival bow.
Grappling with navigating daily life in the aftermath of his wife’s death, well-meaning but clueless dad Taylor Wyatt (an ideally cast Tony Hale) and his kids, Amber (Bianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence), each have their own, individual way of coping with loss. While the males in the family tend to bottle up their unspoken grief, Amber wears her art on her sleeve, with drawings of monsters exacting gruesome revenge against an annoying classmate. They alarm her teachers but draw the encouragement of a therapist who gives her a composition book to safely act on her anger issues.
Meanwhile, more introverted Jack, who has stumbled upon a mysterious pond in the woods with the proven ability to repair damaged objects, wonders what effects those healing powers might have on his mother’s scattered ashes.
Just when he’s about to act on his theory, Amber’s sketchbook accidentally lands in the murky water, and before you can say Babadook , a torrent of her sick and twisted creations come to life, wreaking havoc on everything in their path. As Amber, Jack and talky Bowman (Kalon Cox), the original object of Amber’s ire, join forces to fend off their adversaries, oblivious Dad, whose realtor sister (D’Arcy Carden) has the listing on their home, is preoccupied just trying to get the place in order.
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While Worley has asserted that from the beginning the pitch for Sketch was “ Inside Out meets Jurassic Park ,” one can’t help but also notice elements of Goonies , Gremlins , Goosebumps , Stranger Things and Where the Wild Things Are sprinkled in for good measure.
All that derivation might have been a glaring liability in lesser hands, but Worley has adroitly assembled the mega-mash-up into an engaging whole, with the help of an amiable cast and a crack technical team. Hale tamps down the edges of his more neurotic Arrested Development and Veep personas to play the anchoring role of a perfectly average dad just trying to figure out the right way forward for his traumatized family. He’s the relative calm in a swirling sea of chaos.
That chaos is calibrated for maximum audacity thanks to visual effects supervisor Dan Sturm’s prudently incorporated CGI, which doesn’t skimp on the wow factor and is further amped up by composer Cody Fry’s cacophonous, rambunctious score.
Granted, the film could have stood more restraint in the breathless, pop culture-infused banter between the kids, and Worley is guilty of leaning in a little too heavily on the dead mom trope. But the upshot still packs a buoyant punch.
Grief has never been processed with such eye-popping panache.
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