Wonder Park

For a PG-rated film with bright, cheerful animation, Wonder Park delivers a surprisingly dark time at the movies.

Coincidentally borrowing from its fellow weekend releases, the year’s first children’s film not involving plastic bricks from Denmark combines Captive State’s Trojan Horse concept — at least in covertly delivering heavy messages — with the life-threatening-illness focus of Five Feet Apart for a simplistic but optimistic look at cancer.

Caught in these unexpectedly complex circumstances is preteen June (voiced by relative newcomer Brianna Denski), a brainy only child whose progressiveness as the film’s lead is fortified by multiple Indian-American neighborhood friends, namely the not-so-secretly adoring Banky (Oev Michael Urbas).

Along with her mother (Jennifer Garner, further typecasting herself on the domestic front), June concocts wild rides for their ambitious make-believe theme park, Wonderland, whispering the concepts into the ear of her stuffed-animal monkey, Peanut (Norbert Leo Butz, Better Living Through Chemistry).

June then imagines her simian conduit in the dream world, seeing her creative plans through with his literal magic marker — bling that would make Kanye West jealous — while his fellow anthropomorphic colleagues entertain their appreciative visitors and captive viewers alike.

But when her mom becomes sick to the point of being sent away for special treatments and with June slated to attend a summer math camp, her purportedly incapable father (Matthew Broderick) — who eerily resembles Tasty Beverage Co. owner Johnny Bellflower — will be left alone to trash the house with empty pizza boxes, at least as she humorously imagines.

Unwilling to abide such outcomes, June miraculously (a bit overly so) escapes from the math camp bus, starts her trek homeward and suddenly finds herself in Wonderland, kicking into high gear imagery far trippier than the average kiddie fare — especially the cute but nefarious chimpanzombies that are systematically destroying the park — yet also consistently pleasing to the eye.

Improbably in the realm of her own creation, having fallen on hard times also caused by her own hand, she joins forces with animals voiced by the nicely diverse cast of Mila Kunis, John Oliver, Kenan Thompson, Ken Jeong and Ken Hudson Campbell (Santa from Home Alone) in a series of exciting set pieces to restore Wonderland to its former glory.

Packed with both requisite dopey pop songs that cater to the film’s target audience and advanced math and other highbrow references that are likely to fly over developing heads, Wonder Park hits theaters with some notoriety due to its lack of a credited director.

While Dylan Brown, a former Pixar animator with Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatouille on his resumé, was fired from his feature directorial debut after multiple allegations of “inappropriate and unwanted behavior,” the film is just barely worth taking credit for, so a bit of self-sabotage isn’t entirely out of the question.

But don’t take my word for it…

Wonder Park
★★★★
By Lucas McKee

Wonder Park was kind of funny, kind of cool and kind of scary. I would tell other kids and grown-ups to go see it.

I am not sure about the main character, June. She invented the park, but she also accidentally created the darkness that begins to destroy the park. The darkness sends the chimpanzombies. They made the movie scary. They said all these gibberish words that I did not understand. I wanted them to stop saying the gibberish words because they were getting stuck in my head. When Wonderland is full of darkness, the chimpanzombies keep saying, “It’s a wonderful day in Wonderland!” — but it’s actually not a wonderful day! Even though the chimpanzombies were scary, they were also funny.

June eventually finds the park in the real world. She finds a rocket she created that takes her to the park. There she meets the animals who live there. My favorite character was Steve the porcupine. He was crazy and British. I like the part when he says that the chimpanzombies are “so cute but so naughty!” I also like how he says, “Dinner is served!” He also backs up and beeps like a garbage truck: “Beep … beep … beep … beep!”

My second-favorite character was Boomer the bear. I really like it when he screams on the crazy roller coaster ride near the end of the movie. Gus and Cooper are woodchucks and also ate a bunch of the roller coaster to help Boomer, but their plan didn’t work. Then, one of them said, “At least we had dinner.”

I keep wondering why the title is Wonder Park. During the movie, everyone calls it “Wonderland,” and nobody calls it “Wonder Park.”

A lot of the characters say, “It’s a splendiferous idea!” — which I thought was kind of weird. Is splendiferous a REAL word? It may be! Wonder Park was mostly splendiferous.