Some times I just don’t understand Rotten Tomatoes.

I was planning to watch Netflix’s new film, Slumberland, tonight and before I set it up, I jumped over to Rotten Tomatoes to see its score. I will admit that, every once in a while, I look at Netflix movies to see the score because a lot of times the Netflix originals are not very good and it might save me some time and help me avoid some clunkers.

Slumberland had a 35%.

I was truly disappointed because I was looking forward to this movie. I decided that I was going to watch it anyway and, you know what… it was pretty good.

Was it a perfect movie? No. But was it 35%? No way. That meant approximately 2 out of 3 critics gave it a rotten review. And I thought this was extremely charming, fun, and full of creative ideas.

Based on a comic strip called Little Nemo in Slumberland, Slumberland featured the young girl Nemo (Marlow Barkley), who lived with her father (Kyle Chandler) in a lighthouse on an island. When her father died at sea, Nemo had to go live with her uncle Philip (Chris O’Dowd).

Slumberland was a land where Nemo’s father and Philip would explore as children. It was the land of dreams. There were rules to the land that had to be followed. After his death, Nemo went into Slumberland to try and find her dad. She met his old partner Flip (Jason Momoa) and they went through a bunch of adventures.

So, yes there were some parts of the story that could have been edited out to make the story more streamlined. There was a whole story arc involving Agent Green (Weruche Opia) that could have been eliminated.

The CGI was fine, but did not stand out as it could have. It showed the restrictions of budget for sure.

However, I thought Marlow Barkley did an excellent job as Nemo and that she had a great connection with Jason Momoa and also with Chris O’Dowd. Jason Momoa was the clear standout of the cast. He looked like he was having all kinds of fun, although I did get kind of tired of his apparent Beetlejuice impression that he seemed to always be doing.

There were a lot of creative thought in the movie and had some good moments of emotion. This would be a fun family movie to watch during the holidays and sometime that is enough.

3.4 stars