Tom Ryberg

Wonder Park is charming enough, with compelling animation and an engaging storyline about how a girl fights to keep her creative spark alive in the face of her sadness. That said, I was disappointed with the extent to which the magic of Wonder Park was dependent on narrative and stylistic elements already perfected in Inside Out, The Incredibles, and Moana. Wonder Park's central idea of a theme park within the psyche of a late elementary girl that begins to deteriorate and malfunction as she becomes depressed, is not original to Wonder Park at all--for that we can thank Inside Out, which to me also handles the underlying psychology better. Also borrowed from Pixar/Disney were the robot and coconut villains from the first Incredibles and Moana, who are recycled as a robot villain and the murderously cute "chimpanzombies" in Wonder Park. The end result is that the things I liked best about Wonder Park don't actually come from Wonder Park. Other than all the creative borrowing, I suppose Wonder Park is a fine kids' movie. I'm just struggling with the integrity of an approach that seems to be more intent to cash in on existing successful tropes created by others, rather than trying to carve new paths on your own. Hmm, maybe someone make a movie about that.