Slumberland (PG), on Netflix
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This is loosely based on a 1905-1927 comic strip called "Little Nemo in Slumberland", which I've never read. The movie was released in 2022, but I didn't see it until 2025. It didn't do very well with critics, but I liked it quite a lot.
There's an 11-year-old girl named Nemo (played by Marlow Barkley, familiar to me from Single Parents), who lives with her widowed father, Peter (Kyle Chandler), in a lighthouse. Every night, Peter tells Nemo stories about his adventures with Flip, his former partner as an "outlaw". One night he tells her a story about pearls that can grant wishes, which can only be found in the treacherous Sea of Nightmares. Later that night, Peter goes out on his boat in a storm, to rescue another boat that was in distress. Nemo has a dream of him being taken away by a nightmare (a swirling cloud of smoke) after being sucked into a whirlpool. The next morning, a woman named Carla informs her that Peter has died. Nemo must move to the city to live with her uncle Philip (Chris O'Dowd, most familiar to me from Moone Boy), who she's never met. She also has to start going to school for the first time, as she was previously home schooled.
One night, she has another dream, in which her stuffed pig, Pig, comes to life. Her bed also comes to life and carries her back to the lighthouse, where she meets Flip (Jason Momoa), rummaging through her father's belongings. He's looking for a map that leads through Slumberland, which is made up of all the dreams in the world, to the Sea of Nightmares. Nemo wants to go with him to get a pearl, so she can wish her father back. Flip is against that idea at first, but in a subsequent dream, Pig finds the map in a box of things Nemo had brought with her to her uncle's home. When she wakes up, she discovers that the map exists in the real world, as well. She brings it with her next time she goes to sleep, and finds Flip again, and convinces him to let her come along. The two of them (and Pig) travel through various people's dreams, each time looking for a door into the next dream. They are pursued by an agent of the Bureau of Subconscious Activities who Flip calls Green, and who he has been eluding for many years. They are also pursued by the same nightmare Nemo had seen take her father. Flip tells Nemo that he has been asleep so long that he's forgotten who he was in the real world. (This made me think he might be in a coma, but he's not. I won't spoil who it eventually turns out he is, though.)
Well, I don't want to spoil too much more of the plot, but Nemo eventually does find the pearls. And... yeah, that's all I want to say. I thought it was a fun movie, and there are some scary bits, particularly near the end. But ultimately there's a very happy ending. To be honest, for much of the movie, I thought I'd probably end up rating it three smileys, which is a respectable rating, but by the end I considered giving it one heart, which is even better. But I guess I don't quite love the movie, just very nearly do. So I gave it four and a half smileys, as you can see. I enjoyed the story overall, and I liked all the acting, and all the characters, and the visual effects, and everything. The dreams they traveled through were all rather interesting. (Well, most of them.) But what I liked most of all were some of the more emotional moments, especially the good ones (though the bad ones were good for the story, too). I suppose some of the characters also learned valuable lessons from everything they went through, but I don't want to get into specifics about any of that. Anyway... I just can't see anything not to like about the movie.