Wonder Park Is a Mostly Soulless Spectacle

Family movies are a hard genre to pull off, because you are catering to more than one type of viewer, and at a lot of stories that toe the line have a tendency to fall flat on their face. So one would think that a film about an amusement park would have that down to a science, but is Wonder Park worth the price of admission, or just a disappointing county fair knockoff?

Wonder Park tells the story of an amusement park where the imagination of a young girl named June comes alive. One day, June is running through the woods to find her way home where she discovers an old roller coaster car and climbs inside. She suddenly finds herself in Wonderland, an amusement park she had created in her mind and put aside. All of her rides and characters are brought to life but are falling into disarray without her. Now, with the help of her park characters, June must put the wonder back in Wonderland before it is lost forever.

The first thing that sticks out for this movie is it’s visuals. Nickelodeon Movies films are well known for the stylish animation, and the bright colors coupled with the lighting effects make the many parts of the amusement park a glorious spectacle to behold.

The voice cast was average, casting safe bets like Mila Kunis and John Oliver. Also newcomer Brianna Denski (June) has a lot of potential as a voice actor, she just needs better material. And the theater geek in me squealed over hearing Norbert Leo Butz as Mr. Peanut.

The soundtrack reminds me of a Walt Disney World attraction.

Sadly this film is all style but no substance — so much so I was barely motivated to write this review.

The plot is so generic that it feels like being stuck on the same ride for 90 minutes, going for something akin to Willy Wonka meets the Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately in copying the more formulaic aspects of these types of films, they neglected the heart of them.

Hidden in this muddled plot, is the potential for a heartfelt story about the power of imagination and creativity, but the film reeks of so much franchise baiting that this potential is lost.

So if you want to shut your kids up for 85 minutes, you can do a lot worse than Wonder Park, but I’m afraid that I am a little too old for this ride.

Wonder Park (Paramount, Nickelodeon Movies; PG; 1hr 25mins) gets a 2.5 out of 5.