Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992)
Directed by:
Masami Hata
William Hurtz
Written by:
Chris Columbus
Richard Outten
Based on “Little Nemo” by Winsor McCay
Produced by Yutaka Fujioka
Production Company: Tokyo Movie Shinsha
Distributed by: Toho-Towa (Japan) and Hemdale Film Corporation (US)
Runtime: 95 minutes
Released on August 21, 1992 (United States Release Date)
My partner and I were hunting for something to watch. I remember fondly this film, so I asked if they would be willing to watch it with me sometime. They, of course, stated they would. This film is just a nostalgic little trip, so that is the main reason for watching this particular film.
Nostalgic feelings can sometimes cloud how we feel about a certain film. We remember it a certain way and associate it with a particular feeling. This film could have easily fallen into that trap, but thankfully due to time and age, I couldn’t exactly remember when I exactly had seen this film previously. I just remember that I had and that it was one I enjoyed.
It is a silly film in that Nemo is a character that goes between a weird Slumberland and our world from time to time. He has had nightmares of something, which plaques a large portion of the film. We have a lot of various characters that are part of Slumberland specifically that make this a fun little trip. The animation is not distracting, but nothing phenomenal. It is just an animated film style and not one that provides anything new to the world of animation, in my opinion. This, however, does not take away from the fact that this is an entertaining film. If you understand how I feel about films, you know that entertaining is my main benchmark. If you stay on the side of entertaining, you will always get a 3 or above in my personal rating. This film does that again, years upon years after seeing it as a kiddo.
The film is just a fantastical little romp that reminded me of childhood. It can be pleasant to have a nice memory from that period of time, given how much of childhood is a bleh for me. This film though was very pleasant. It wasn’t anything so great that I am singing about it to the heavens, but this film did create a nice little escape for a bit of time. You have magical beds, flying characters, a bad/good guy character that you just can’t be sure which side they are on, and a princess. These are all things that I live for. They just were not executed to a 100% success. There are moments that are lagging in story or where it doesn’t feel like they cohesively knew what they were doing, but then it goes back on track a bit. This weird back and forth confused me. This is why I couldn’t get this mentally into a 4 or 5 rating area. It was just a pleasant film to waste time. Nothing else. I would still say that your time will be okay spent with this film though and if you have the time to watch a silly fantasy world film, you can find worse ways to spend that time. It is magical, but that magic simply fizzles throughout in places. Perhaps the strips are a bit better?
The film is based on an old newspaper strip called “Little Nemo” by Winsor McCay. I am hoping to find some of these collected strips to read because I would love to see how they compare to each other. I bet they are only loosely similar, but I think in this case that would make reading these strips even more exciting.
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