Wonder Park (2019)

Wonder Park (2019)

5/10

Starring the voices of

Jennifer Garner

Matthew Broderick

John Oliver

Mila Kunis

Directed by Dylan Brown

I cannot go pass a 5/10 because of the plot of this movie even though I enjoyed it for what it is, a fantasy adventure animation whose plot is as lose as diarrhea. The animation is not well oiled for adult viewing, but colorfully juiced for children. So there is the problem of a plot that has so many holes, lacking in strength and conviction to make an adult want to sit through this movie again.

The design and build up is set with a child mind as the audience. Said child will naturally not read much meaning into all this, and just watch it for what it is – a little girl whose sick mother meant no more fuel for her fantasy world.

Wonder Park has those endings that I wish a lot of animations try to incorporate into their plots. Here is an animation based on hope and it ends with the joy of hope restored. It did not try to force the child to go through the loss of a parent, or force us the viewer to go through the cliché of watching another single parent movie. The normal is a child whose potential were dashed by the loss of the other parent, and the magically restored by the effect of love from some other source. Wonder Park did something not so unique, but a little different in its own sort of way, instead of a loss, why not absence and return.

The plot introduces us to June a little girl who has a very great imagination. One of her greatest audience is her mother and together they built the magical amusement park called Wonder Park.

June’s mother always encourages June to continue to be imaginative and that if she believes she can make her dreams come through. Which led to June doing some very crazy stuff in her neighborhood.

A sad day came when June’s mum fell ill and has to be taken to the hospital for a long while, June gave up on everything concerning Wonder Park and became obsessed with caring for her father.

On her way to Math Camp (something she did not want to do), she saw a letter from her father telling he loved her and she took it as a sign for her not to go. She finds her way off the bus and gets lost in the woods. He journey through the woods leads her to Wonder Park, a place which before now only exist in her dreams. Wonder Park was a shadow of itself, and it is being hunted by zombies who want to take all the magical creatures to the darkness.

Wonder Park was not a commercial hit, which was not a surprised because the marketing was not so great. I do not recall hearing about this animation until I saw it on a site.