IN YOUR DREAMS

Here's the shape of it. Stevie overhears her mom talking about a job in another city, and her dad wanting to stay put. Worried, she and her little brother Elliot go looking for the Sandman in a dream world to wish their parents back together. What follows is funny, inventive, and — for a stretch — genuinely scary, as the dreamland turns into nightmares.

Stick with it. The ending is the payoff: a positive, theologically sound resolution that discredits the magical thinking the plot leans on and instead affirms repentance and real family commitment. That's a rare and welcome landing for a family film.

The cost is real, though. The nightmare sequences are strong enough to scare younger viewers, and the movie spends real time in magical-thinking territory before it corrects course. If your kids handle scary content well, this is a fun, heartfelt watch. If they don't, wait until they're a little older — or watch it with them and talk through it as you go.

Stevie overhears her mother considering a job in another city, while her father wants to stay in their small Minnesota town. Worried her family is coming apart, Stevie tells her younger brother Elliot, and together they go looking for a way to bring their parents back together. A forgotten book in a secondhand store's basement points them toward the Sandman — a figure who, they're told, can grant a dream come true. The two children set off into a wildly imaginative dream world to find him, with more waiting for them there than they expect.

Three stars means this is a genuinely fun, well-crafted film that doesn't quite stick the landing all the way through. The animation is well done, the characters are adorable, and the movie earns real laughs in its first half — the humor lands.

Where it wobbles is structure. The plot gets a little murky in the middle, and the last quarter of the film trades away much of the comedy for scarier, heavier material. That's not necessarily a flaw — the ending it builds toward is worth the trade — but the tonal shift is real, and parents should know the back half plays very differently than the front half.

This is a film that earns its happy ending honestly. Its dominant worldview is strongly moral: the story sets up magical thinking — the idea that wishing hard enough in a dream can fix your family — and then dismantles it. What actually saves this family isn't a wish granted by the Sandman; it's repentance and a real choice to stay together. A mother who considers leaving repents and chooses her family. A sister who lashes out at her brother repents of that too. That's a rare thing for a fantasy film to model this clearly.

The dream-world machinery along the way carries some slightly occult flavoring — a book of Sandman lore, children discovering they're "psychologically united" in shared dreams — and a benevolent figure who becomes, unexpectedly, part of the danger. None of it is treated as something to imitate; it's the engine of the plot, not the message of the film.

What the story ultimately longs for is a family made whole — parents who stay, siblings who make peace. Scripture speaks to that same longing directly: God's own promise is "to turn the hearts of fathers to their children" (Malachi 4:6). A dream and a wish can't do that work. Repentance can — and this film, unusually, knows it.

This is a film with real heart — funny, inventive, and landing on a genuinely biblical note about repentance and family. It's also scarier in its second half than its opening promises, and it leans on magical thinking before correcting itself. Our answer: worth the trip — with caution for younger children. If your little ones scare easily, preview it first or wait a bit.