June Bailey loves to create the imaginary amusement park Wonderland with her mother. Even after causing mayhem with a backyard ride for the neighborhood kids, her mother stills supports her imagination. After her mother gets sick and goes away for treatment, June abandons Wonderland and becomes excessively careful. She stops playing with her friends and clears out all of her constructions. Her father pushes her to go to math camp. She runaways back to her father and finds a rundown magical Wonderland in the woods. The park is crumbling under the attack of the Chimpanzombies and an encroaching Darkness.

With Nickelodeon and the movie trailer, I expected a cutesy kiddie movie. I expected Trolls. This is not that except with the brightly colored action scenes and the flashy amusement park. There is two kinds of movies struggling against each other. Nickelodeon is not capable of doing this but I can see this being handled better by a top notch team from Pixar. The trailer doesn't mention the sick mom and the sadness. Throwing the map into the fire is a truly dark scene of grief and sadness. It's a shocking movie coming from the Nickelodeon sensibilities. If one ignores the expectations, there is a really interesting movie here. It may not be the kiddie movie one expects but it is a movie about something more real. It is the dead Disney moms. It is the tear jerker at the beginning of Up. It needs a studio with more gravitas. I don't know if the situation with the director has anything to do with anything. It's another thing that casts a shadow on the situation. The animation is fine for a kiddie movie. It's got the bright colors, wacky animal characters, and the wild actions. Somehow, it's not quite right and it's not quite right from the moment Nickelodeon appears on the screen.

I sat down to watch "Wonder Park" with my 9 year old son, and it turned out that this 2019 animated movie was actually enjoyable for the both of us. I hadn't really expected much from an animated movie such as this, but I ended up liking it.

The storyline in "Wonder Park" is a bit generic and predictable, for sure. But come on, it is an animated movie after all. It is not like it is going to revolutionize the movie business. But director Dylan Brown did manage to get this to be something enjoyable for old and young alike.

The animation style and art, is for me, a very crucial part of whether or not I will sit down to watch an animated movie. And I liked both the visual art and the animation in "Wonder Park". However, it just felt somewhat like so many other recent animated movies, so it wasn't really outstanding or particularly memorable. But I must say that the small toy monkey army was so hilarious, and really stole the show. I was so amused by them.

With this being an animated movie, the selection of voice actors and actresses need to be good. And I will admit that they had some nice talents to do the voices for this 2019 animated movie, with the likes of Jennifer Garner, Kenan Thompson, Mila Kunis, Ken Jeong and Matthew Broderick. But I must admit that Brianna Denski, whom voiced June, was really doing a phenomenal job, and I can't really claim to be familiar with her. But wow, she carried this so well.

While "Wonder Park" hardly is going to be an animated classic for me, it is definitely one that is worth watching at least once.

Lame animated film that feels like it was created by committee, because it probably was. No cliche is too cliche to be included, while not a single joke or sentiment in the film is one you haven't seen a hundred times before in much better films. It's movies like "Wonder Park" that give "movies for kids" a bad name. The thing is, kids have standards too, and mine gave this stinker a thumbs down.

Grade: D