Wonder Park is a Decent Ride

Wonder Park (2019)

Wonder Park had the makings of being a throwaway children’s movie that nobody watches and makes a little money for some lesser-used voice actors, but it surprised the heck out of me. I was expecting to slog through Wonder Park because the trailers did not give the actual story justice. From the trailers, you just think that a kid discovers a theme park that was built from her imagination, but that only scrapes the surface. When the girl was young, she and her mother would bond by imagining theme park attractions for their made up park, Wonderland. As she grows up, she wants to build models of the rides and gets better and better at engineering until her house is filled with functional replicas. Then her mother gets sick and has to be admitted for long-term care. The girl has trouble handling the stress, and she runs away from math summer camp to go home. When she is running away, she encounters her park, which is in disrepair because she and her mom haven’t been imagining it and she has to save it. The process of her saving the park mirrors her process of accepting grief and growing from it instead of letting it destroy everything. It is honestly one of the best representations of childhood grief I have ever seen in a movie and is an excellent tool for any family struggling with loss or illness. While some of the animals are very flat characters and annoying, it is not bad enough to trample the message of the movie. I am shocked how much I enjoyed this movie. I give Wonder Park $110 out of the $129 cost of a one-day pass to Disney World during peak season. No wonder Bob Iger makes $65.6 million each year.