Review of Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989) by Tom K — 13 Dec 2015

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland is the animated feature length adaptation of Windsor McCay's beloved comic strip Little Nemo. The film was animated by a Japanese company, but features aesthetics that are similar to western animation of the day (understandable, since the 90's were primo asian outsource time for american animation projects).

Nemo's a bit like Walter Mitty; he has insanely vivid dreams that have him going to Slumberland where crazy shit happens like his bed flying around (with Nemo on it, like Aladdin's magic carpet), or walking around on giant stilt-like legs, going to giant mushroom forests, meeting crazy jester looking clowns, fighting dragons, chillin in candy lands, kings, princesses, steamboats, and lots of other crazy dream crap. In this film Nemo is summoned to Slumberland to be the Princess of Slumberland's playmate, which he does cause... why the fuck not, right? Upon arrival, Nemo meets the King of Slumberland, King Morpheus, and a cigar smoking, vaguely racist representation of a clown named Flip, who happens to be voiced by Mickey Rooney. As the storyline goes on, Nemo shits the bed (figuratively) and accidentally releases the Nightmare King, who just goes to town fucking shit up in slumberland as soon as he's free. From then on, it's up to Nemo to undo his fuckups and make things end happily ever after.

The film is pretty awesome, in that it has a lot of trippy dream-like events taking place, and features a completely badass villain. The storyline is pretty formulaic, but the film is short, and the pace is good so it doesn't affect the flick too negatively. The characters are a lot of fun, and the world's are super imaginative. Since the film was piggybacking on the success of Disney renaissance, you'll find a couple of songs in the movie, which don't hold up that well for me, but if you're into showtunes, ba-bam.

TL;DR - 8/10.

I have a soft spot for this movie, as it was one of the first films I saw when I moved to Canada, and was always fascinated by the vibrant dream world. For you folks that haven't watched this before, you can probably cut up to two points off my review, but I still recommend any fans of children's animation to give it a watch. Also be sure to check out the Little Nemo comic strips, because they're hella fresh too.