I saw one of the biggest surprises of the year today when I went to the family-friendly comedy/adventure/fantasy film, Sketch. When I saw that the movie company Angel Studios was behind it, I had a sinking feeling that this would not be my cup of tea.

Was I wrong about that.

I absolutely loved this movie. It was thrilling, exciting, had tremendously deep characters and strong performances. It had humor as well as wonderful themes and concepts.

It was very creative too, which I love.

We meet young Amber (Bianca Belle) as she was drawing pictures that concerned her teachers. Bringing in her father Taylor (Tony Hale) for meetings, they showed him the bloody, violent art that Amber had been drawing.

Taylor’s wife, Ally (Allie McCulloch), had died recently, and Amber was dealing with her grief and loss through her art. Her father was not dealing with it at all, as he simple never talked about Ally and took all the pictures of her out of their house. This led to Amber being upset and Amber’s brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) over correcting in an attempt to fix things.

When Jack discovered a magical pond that seemed to be able to fix things, he decides to try something rash. Instead, Amber’s drawing wound up falling into the water which brings the monsters that she had drawn to life, terrorizing the town and her family. The chaos surrounding everything forced the different characters to face their grief in order to get together to stop the monsters.

This was so great. I thought both Bianca Belle and Kue Lawrence did an amazing job as brother/sister. I believed everything these two were going through and they did it in, at times, a very subtle way. When you toss in a third child actor playing the obnoxious Bowman Lynch (Kalon Cox), the three kids truly brought out some of the best scenes from each other. Kalon Cox was hilarious with his b-hole kid.

Tony Dale is always great and he brought a lot to this role. He was worried about his kids, but he also had to deal with the grief of losing his wife and the knowledge that his own repressive actions led directly to the chaos that was going on.

The monsters were really cool looking and the way they would be stopped was such a fun way, with colors everywhere.

There are moments of true horror as well, including some jump scares tossed in for the heck of it. The tension would build through the whole film and you were never quite sure if or how Amber was going to deal with her own feelings. I loved Jack and his efforts to help his sister as a way to deal with his own loss.

The writing of this is tremendous as the kids are allowed to deal with their deep seeded emotions while still trying to deal with each other and with the dangers of the world around them. The emotion is not restricted to the adult characters here as Amber and Jack handle some strong feelings.

I did not know what to expect when I went to this as a way to kill time between Nobody 2 and the RiffTrax Live: Time Cop that I was going to. Where I expected just to pass time, I was thoroughly engaged and entertained by this fun, emotional, colorful, well-acted jewel of a film. I think it is one of my favorite movies of the year and that was quite the surprise.

5 stars