‘In Your Dreams’ review: Netflix family animation proves something of a snoozefest

Dir: Alex Woo. US. 2025. 91mins

Seeking a magical fix for her parents’ impending separation, a perfectionist tween gets her wish answered in unexpected ways in Alex Woo’s feature directorial debut. The heartfelt animation In Your Dreams follows the girl and her pesky younger brother as they discover that they can enter the same dreamworld and possibly track down The Sandman, who can grant their wish that their mum and dad stay together. But neither the fantastical premise nor the ideas around divorce and sibling rivalry are well-developed in this disappointingly unimaginative picture.

Bogged down by juvenile jokes and an underwhelming narrative

Netflix will release In Your Dreams in US theatres on November 7 before putting the film on its platform a week later. The story should appeal mostly to younger viewers, and no doubt the studio hopes to lure family audiences during the holidays. (In Your Dreams’ principal competition will be the forthcoming Zootopia 2.) Craig Robinson, Simu Liu and Cristin Milioti are the biggest names in the voice cast, but it seems safe to assume this will not have the same cultural impact as fellow Netflix animation KPop Demon Hunters.

Twelve-year-old midwesterner Stevie (voiced by Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) adores her parents (Liu and Milioti), although she harbours a grudge against her eight-year-old brother Elliot (Elias Janssen), convinced that the family was happier before he was born. She notices that her parents are distant with one another, a byproduct of financial woes. When her mum gets an interview for a promising job hundreds of miles away — and her father expresses misgivings about moving — Stevie fears it could mean they will break up.

The answer to her anxieties comes from an unlikely place: a book she and her brother find about a mythical being known as The Sandman. Conjuring him through an incantation, Stevie and Elliot are whisked away into a shared unconscious where they confront their most frequent dreams but also begin a journey to locate The Sandman.

Woo, a longtime Pixar story artist who formed independent animation company Kuku Studios about a decade ago, draws from his own childhood to tell this story of a young person grappling with her parents’ possible divorce. In Your Dreams is most affecting when it touches on the confusion and pain that children experience when their sense of stability feels ripped away. As Stevie and Elliot navigate the logistics of the dreamworld, what hits hardest is the characters’ desperation to find a solution to their problem — and, more poignantly, their fragile belief that they alone can save their parents’ marriage.

Unfortunately, In Your Dreams gets bogged down by juvenile jokes and an underwhelming narrative. Between the tedious fart humour and the lacklustre quips, the script (written by Woo and co-director Erik Benson) fails to be especially funny. But even the seemingly limitless possibilities of the dreamworld — both visually and storywise — don’t inspire much delight or inventiveness. Instead, Woo falls back on predictable cinematic reference points, dabbling in mediocre Spielbergian wonder and riffing on familiar films like The Shining.

The siblings quickly deduce that the challenge will be staying asleep long enough to make their way to the mysterious Sandman. (Each time they wake up due to “dying” in the dreamworld, they have to essentially start over, a la Edge Of Tomorrow.) Along the way, they will encounter Baloney Tony, Elliot’s beloved giraffe stuffed animal, who’s alive in their unconscious and, because he’s voiced by Robinson, a wisecracking smart aleck. The comedic actor does his best with the meagre lines he’s given, but Tony feels like little more than the obligatory wacky/adorable side character that appears in every animated family film.

In Your Dreams’ animation style emphasises a realistic look for its human characters, growing more colourful each time Stevie and Elliot reenter the dreamworld. And Woo reveals a twist about halfway through that forces highstrung Stevie to reassess her anxious need for her parents to remain together — and, also, her relationship with her brother, who Janssen plays as the typical annoying younger sibling who drives her sister crazy.

Although the picture’s undemanding approach will probably frustrate teens and early twentysomethings, the film ends on an appreciably nuanced message for children about modern families and the value of living in the real world, as opposed to clinging to unrealistic dreams. Those are meaningful lessons, even if one wishes the film accompanying them was more enchanting.