Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland
directed by Masami Hata and William Hurtz
written by Chris Columbus, Richard Outten, and Moebius
Watching Little Nemo, I had the strange experience of realizing that if I'd seen it when it first came out, I probably would have loved it, but today, I merely appreciate its aesthetics. It's the sort of movie my family might easily have owned on VHS, the sort my sister and I would've watched over and over, like we did with Bedknobs and Broomsticks. What I felt, I guess, was a kind of disappointment, the loss of the experience I could have had, but didn't.
The opening credits list Moebius as one of the screenwriters, and Ray Bradbury in some sort of consultant role. The animation is good. The look is roughly ⅔ Don Bluth and ⅓ Studio Ghibli. The residents of Slumberland all dress in colorful costumes, many of them circus-inspired, and the landscapes are gorgeous. There are some action sequences, inspired by nightmares, that are genuinely frightening even to adults, because they tap into some sort of primal fear, of being chased, of going too fast, of not being in control, of being trapped, of drowning.
The story itself is fairly standard. Nemo, who has vivid dreams, receives an invitation from the King of Slumberland to come to his kingdom and become his chosen heir. He gives Nemo a special key and tells him to never open one specific door...
Nemo meets the princess, but has no interest in hanging out with girls. Then he meets a disreputable frog / hobo / clown fellow who promises to show him some off-limits points of interest. Naturally they end up at the forbidden door, and naturally the disreputable fellow convinces Nemo that it couldn't hurt to open it just enough to take a peek...
The king holds a coronation ceremony for Nemo, shows off the power of his scepter, then lays it on thick about how much trust he's putting in Nemo to bequeath him this power. Just then, a cloud of nightmares escapes the door and kidnaps the king.
Nemo feels guilty and confesses. Nemo, the princess, and the clown guy go to the Nightmare Kingdom to rescue the king. They succeed! And we all learn an important lesson about keeping our promises, and telling the truth about our mistakes.
One complaint I have is that, because this was the 80s, no one ever considers the possibility that the princess, the king's actual daughter, might be an appropriate heir for his power ad responsibility. The idea simply never occurs to anyone at any point. By the mid-90s, I suspect you'd have the princess herself saying it, and perhaps even Nemo giving her either the key or the scepter in the very last scene of the film. These days, I sort of hope she might be the heir from the start. Nemo could still be there as her friend and companion.
Flip, the hobo / frog / clown character, feels like maybe he was a stock figure in Depression era fiction, but is the sort of guy who rarely gets written these days. And I can't say I exactly mourn the loss. Because while he's constantly breaking the rules and making trouble for everyone, he's mostly treated as a lovable annoyance.
He's like, a 50 year old man, who convinces a little boy to go off and do things he knows he's not supposed to, things Nemo feels guilty about even though Flip doesn't, and the film seems to accept the framing of this as Nemo's mistake. The other characters are annoyed at Flip for being a bad influence, but he's not banished or anything. He goes on the rescue mission and still gets to loiter around the royal court at the end, a privilege few law-abiding Slumerlandians seem to enjoy.
Maybe it's good, actually that "unemployed bachelor uncle with criminal record who's not supposed to be alone with the children, but who all the adults tolerate and indulge" isn't a common character type anymore!
My final complaint is that the final battle against the Night on Bald Mountain-looking, satanic King of Nightmare mostly hinges on Nemo repeatedly struggling to recite the lengthy string of nonsense words that make up the incantation that activates the scepter.
I thought Bedknobs and Broomsticks had the same problem at a few points, but at least there it's not the whole pivotal climax! (Jim Henson's The Frog Prince gets a bit of a pass, because the princess's curse makes her switch the starting consonants of words, not speak pure gibberish. The other characters can't understand her, but the audience can.) Some could probably compare the few successful and many failed examples to explain why "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" is a bop and Nemo babbling just felt like it went on way too long, but suffice it to say that heroes struggling to remember and recite magic words rarely makes for the compelling viewing that filmmakers seem to want them to.
Despite those flaws, I enjoyed the visual spectacle, and if the plot wasn't particularly special, it did at least serve its purpose of carrying us from one beautiful vista to the next at a good pace, and without creating any undue confusion.
Originally watched March 2023.
Originally watched March 2023.
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