Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

Nemo (Gabriel Damon) is a young boy who's prone to vivid dreaming and sneaking pies. After a circus comes to town he's told by his father that he might be too busy to go to the circus. When Nemo's next dream comes he's visited by Professor Genius (René Auberjonois) so he may be the playmate of the princess of Slumberland. Once there Nemo explores not only the wonders of Slumberland, but must also contend with the nightmares of Nightmareland after he breaks a promise not to open a forbidden door.

Produced over a period of roughly a decade and adapted from the comic strip by Winsor McCay, the movie became infamous for its revolving door of writers, directors, and producers that resulted in the creation of THREE different pilot films (One of which has never been released) before its final version was released. The movie was met with mixed reviews and lackluster box office, but did eventually manage to turn a profit thanks to healthy VHS sales. The movie is very beautiful to look at, but it's most likely far short of where the creative team wished to take it.

The movie's real star is the visuals and animation. The line work is very clean and the opening sequence where Nemo flies his bed is simply breath taking. But the movie runs into the problem of sticking too close to its source because the fact that everything happens in a dream makes much of the following film feel kind of hollow. There are some attempts to try and tie what happens in the dream to Nemo's real life with a forced parallel between his promise not to sneak pies and a promise not to open a forbidden door, but this connection is so tenuous that on its initial release it was edited out of the American version and no one really noticed. After the opening dream sequence the movie doesn't have much of a plot as Nemo basically stumbles around Slumberland playing around with the various sets and characters who are all patterned after the circus in one way or another, and because there's that theme around Slumberland it doesn't lend itself to much surprise so Slumberland feels much more mundane than it should.

In many ways an actual plot doesn't take place until about 40 minutes in where Nemo has to go to Nightmareland to rescue King Morpheus from a nightmare he accidentally released, but even this plot is rather lacking and disjointed because whenever Nemo is backed into a corner he'll "wake up" back in his bed but still be in the dream. This is done twice and further undermines the story of the movie because if it's a dream why should we care?

Despite the rather thin narrative the movie does have some merits. Even if there's a flabby mid section with not much substance, the opening and ending of the movie are really well done and filled with effectively built up atmosphere that is conveyed with striking animation and visuals. Even years after I'd seen this film the flying bed sequence and the desolation of Nightmareland with its deafening silence that served as the penultimate crescendo still play clearly in my mind. Little Nemo is a heavilly flawed movie, but it's also one that strives for greatness and has clear effort put in. It doesn't quite stack up to the sum of its parts, but it doesn't fall flat on its face either.