Movie Review – ‘In Your Dreams’ is a sweet reminder that family is the real dream

For just the second time in the 2000s, it looks like an animated film might not crack the top ten at the box office. With Zootopia 2 needing to pull in $200 million in just five weeks to change that, it’s been a strange year for animation. Only one animated movie has even cracked the top 15 — and it wasn’t from Pixar or DreamWorks, but Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle. Instead, 2025 has turned into the year of the live-action adaptation, with Minecraft: The Movie, Lilo & Stitch, and How to Train Your Dragon combining for over $1 billion domestically and $2.6 billion worldwide. Still, that doesn’t mean animation is dead — it’s just evolving, much like the rest of Hollywood. Back in August, KPop Demon Hunters exploded on Netflix, racking up over 325 million views and becoming a global phenomenon. Now, the streamer is hoping to capture a bit of that magic again with In Your Dreams, the first animated feature film from up-and-coming studio Kuku Studios. It may not break records like KDH did, but it’s a warm, imaginative family film that proves there’s still plenty of life left in animation — even if that magic’s now happening on our living room screens.

In Your Dreams centers on 12-year-old Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) and her eight-year-old brother, Elliot (Elias Janssen). Stevie longs for the days when it was just her and her parents — mom Jenn (Cristin Milioti) and dad Michael (Simu Liu) — describing them as “one of those happy families at the beginning of a disaster movie.” That is, until Elliot came along. In addition to being siblings, they’re also roommates — and for a tween girl, there isn’t much worse. Stevie’s a perfectionist who keeps her side of the room spotless, while Elliot thrives in a pig sty. She stresses over grades, he’s fine with a C. Stevie is a worry wart and Elliot lives life as it comes.

Wise beyond her years, Stevie says, “dreams are the mind’s way of trying to fix your problems in the real world.” But between her parents’ rocky marriage and her little brother’s antics, those dreams are starting to blur into nightmares. She’s overheard her parents arguing about money, and her dad — once part of a music duo with her mom — hasn’t finished an album in two years. And with her mom leaving for an out-of-town interview, she decides to take things into her own hands if she can just remind her parents how good things used to be.

Everything changes when Elliot finds The Legend of the Sandman, the Giver of Dreams, an old book. and read a line aloud together, unknowingly linking their dreams. Once they realize what’s happened, they have to work together to make their dreams come true — the only way to reach the mysterious Sandman (Omid Djalili). But the path won’t be easy, as they’re soon hunted by Nightmara (Gia Carides), the “Giver of Nightmares,” who will do anything to stop them.

Directed by Alex Woo, the story is deeply personal. He recently told the Boston Herald that it was inspired by his own childhood, when “my mom left for a little while. She ended up coming back and my parents have been married almost 50 years now.” He went on to say, “Their marriage was far from perfect. When they considered separating, I tried to help keep them together. So in many ways, I’m Stevie.” As for the title, Woo told Animation Magazine, “I wanted to show that, like life, dreams can have a dark side to them. If you focus too much on them, you can kind of miss the reality that’s right in front of your eyes.”

The film doesn’t shy away from tough subjects. With roughly half of all marriages ending in divorce or separation, the topic of parental conflict is real — and rarely explored with this much honesty in children’s animation. Woo captures how perceptive kids can be and how much they sense, even when adults think they’re oblivious. What truly sets In Your Dreams apart, though, is its grounded ending. Not every animated film needs to tie things up neatly with a “happily ever after.” Like Woo says, “Even though it’s messy and it’s complicated, it’s real — and that’s what life is. The messiness that happens in life makes you grow.”

In Your Dreams tackles the heavy topic of family separation with grace, humor, and heart. Kids will fall in love with Baloney Tony, Elliot’s talking stuffed animal (voiced by Craig Robinson), and Chad, one of Sandman’s sandlings, might just be the best animated sidekick since Bob from Despicable Me. Parents, meanwhile, will appreciate its throwback spirit — it’s got clear shades of The NeverEnding Story and even a little Back to the Future energy. For families looking for something original and heartfelt to enjoy together, this is one worth curling up on the couch for.