The Sleepover movie review & film summary (2020)

“The Sleepover” knows how to get you to like everybody at first, because it is initially funny and charming with its characters. Kevin’s not-so-sneaky attempt at plagiarizing “The Martian” for a family history project is just as admirably goofy as his dance scene in the bathroom; Clancy wins us over by being a great cellist, but one with stage fright. And their parents are sweet too—Marino has a nice moment with Clancy in which his dorky way of parenting proves to be as sweet as the cupcakes he leaves out on the kitchen table at night. 

It's the adventure itself that proves to be less than, starting with the big reveals about mom. In the process of trying to find where she went, the kids come across a whole bunch of her gadgets and costumes in a storage locker. But don’t get attached to the gizmos—maybe we’ll see them in a sequel, but “The Sleepover” isn’t about showing off anything that makes it enticing, so much as putting it all through some old tricks. An automatic-driving car is then used for a scene where the kids are screaming for the lives; the same with a laser that later blows up a couple cars in a different car-oriented, screaming scene. It's an easy family comedy trick: if a sequence is only kind of funny, just make everybody scream throughout. 

You root for these kids, not just in their goals, but for them to have an adventure. The lazy plotting of "The Sleepover" gives them a mild one that consists of a lot of traveling and weak mysteries, like watching characters following a straight line that only sometimes zigs or zags. The action for the kids makes for underwhelming sequences of getting from Boston from Cape Cod, and obtaining colonial disguises along the way. The things that they learn about their mother in the process become more innocuous than they are surprising—she really loved William Butler Yeats, and she had friends and a flame before having kids. If these kids somehow had access to a helicopter, or a portal, they’d be able to shave off the time “The Sleepover” wastes in simply getting them to the big event, contrivances that would also fit in with everything else here. 

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