- Content: “Real Family Is Better Than Your Dreams”
| None | Light | Moderate | Heavy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | ||||
| Violence | ||||
| Sex | ||||
| Nudity |
What You Need To Know:
IN YOUR DREAMS has a wonderful, positive, theologically sound ending that touches your mind and heart. However, although the story starts off very funny, it transitions to being very scary, with the characters having to go through nightmares. Also, the movie relies too much on magical thinking, which is refuted in the end. Thus, IN YOUR DREAMS eventually resolves these problems in a very uplifting, heartfelt and wonderful way. However, the movie’s scary content and magical thinking are too strong. So, MOVEGUIDE® urges caution for younger children.
Content:
Very strong moral final worldview discredits strong childhood magical thinking to affirm repentance and family;
No foul language, but at one point a dog is going to the bathroom on a fire hydrant and when the flying bed arrives the dog starts going to the bathroom on the master’s leg;
Lots of scary animated violence in nightmare sequences when donuts wishes breakfast cereals and other benign things become monsters, scary scene of flying through time and space in your dreams with seemingly dangerous falls to earth and to the bottom of a sand castle, benevolent sandman becomes an instigator of violence and much more carton violence including anime segments where sister, Stevie, and younger brother, Elliot, fight off bad dream characters;
No implied or depicted sex scenes or lewd innuendo, but there’s a married kiss and some hugging;
Children dream they’re nude in a department store, but they’re private parts are obscured, and young boy accidentally exposes his upper rear end in one scene;
No alcohol use;
No smoking or drugs; and,
Mother thinks about divorce and leaving her family to go work in another city, but she repents, and family moves together, and sister gets angry at little brother and says some mean things to him, but she repents.
More Detail:
The girl Stevie overhears her mother saying she’s going to take a job at another university in Duluth. The father wants to stay in their small town near Minneapolis. Stevie tells her younger brother, Elliot, and they are both very concerned and want to try to bring their parents back together. When they go to a second-hand store Elliot wanders into the forbidden basement, where he finds a book about the Sandman, who will grant you your dreams if you find him.
That night, Stevie and Elliot are in a wild dream to a land full of sweet treats and breakfast items as well as Elliots favorite stuffed doll, Baloney Tony. Elliot loves baloney. They figure out in this dreamland that they have to find Sandman. However, when their dreams turn into nightmares, they wake up.
Steve is shocked Elliot remembers the same dream. The Sandman book tells them they’re psychologically united (slightly occult). They both try again and again with many adventures to go to Dreamland to find Sandman. Eventually, they do, and Jackie gets her dream from Sandman that she sees her life with her parents back together. If she doesn’t wake up before the last grain of wish sand drops through the dream hourglass, her dream will have come true for her. However, Stevie realizes she’s not in the real world and that Elliot has been excluded from her dream world. Meanwhile, in the real world, she’s lying in the hospital and incapable of waking up.
Elliot realizes he has to go back to Sandman and bring Stevie back from her comatose delusional dream world if he can. But, can he?
IN YOUR DREAMS has a wonderful, heartfelt, uplifting ending that refutes magical thinking and extols family. The premise of the movie is to keep the family together as a family unit. It is wonderful to see a pre-teenage character who wants to keep her family together and be with the family.
Unfortunately, some parts of the movie are too scary and some of the characters are extremely scary, including the character Nightmara, symbolizing nightmares with nightmare sequences. Also, some parts of the movie are slightly obscene, such as dreams of not being dressed. Also, the plot line gets a little murky in the middle, and some of the last quarter of the movie forsakes the humor.
Even so, IN YOUR DREAMS is a fun animated movie with lots of laughs. The characters in the movie are adorable, and the animation is very well done. The movie overall is entertaining.
So, MOVEGUIDE® urges caution for younger children.
