Diksha Sundriyal
The lives of our parents often remain a mystery to us. It takes us some time before we realize that they had a life before we arrived, and it is rather impossible to imagine that they would have been some other way than they are now. So, when a revelation from their past is thrown at us, our surprise knows no bounds and such things often change the way we see our parents. It is on this premise that Netflix’s ‘The Sleepover’ creates its drama.
Exciting as it might seem to explore the dark past of your seemingly boring parent, the Netflix movie never quite taps into its potential. It relies on all the movies in the genre that have come before and borrows one thing or another from them but never tries to transcend it or do something new with it.
The Sleepover Movie Plot
Clancy is a teenager who is unable to have any fun due to her overbearing mother. She doesn’t even a phone, which makes her feel like a freak in a school where even eighth-graders update their daily lives on Instagram. Her younger brother, Kevin, is a bit of weird kid himself, where he is bullied and teased by other kids because of his quirkiness. Their father, Ron, is the owner of a bakery, and their mother, Margot, couldn’t have been any more mundane.
One day, Kevin’s friend, Lewis, comes over for a sleepover, while Clancy’s friend Mim convinces her to sneak off at night to attend the party of a boy she likes. Things get interesting when someone breaks into their house and kidnaps their parents. It turns out that Margot has a very dangerous and complicated past and she is not at all boring or unexciting, as her children had presumed her to be.
The Sleepover Movie Review
If you are in the mood of watching something that doesn’t require any effort on your part, then ‘The Sleepover’ could do the job. The film mixes everything from spy drama to some coming of age angle to the mindless pre-teen content, none of which, on your part, needs too much thinking. If you have been watching a lot of emotionally or psychologically draining films and want something extremely light and maybe a little bit of fun, then this film could seem somewhat enjoyable.
Starting with the good bits, ‘The Sleepover’ has a surprisingly good young cast, who could have been used better in the movie and might just have made it better. The young actors, especially the boys who are just trying to high-five each other at every turn, are unexpectedly fine, and their silliness and awkwardness bring a strange charm to the story. The story goes back and forth between the kids and the parents, but the kids are so promising that you wish that the entire movie had been about them. And that’s where all the fun remains.
Coming to the bad or rather severely mediocre bits of the story, the first thing that irks you about it is how extremely predictable it is. It isn’t just about the plot where you can see every twist, if there are any, coming from a mile away. It is about every little action and dialogue where you already know what’s going to happen before the characters do it the exact same way. The script never hits you with something unexpected and seems so comfortably idle in itself that you already know that no effort is going to be made to make it otherwise.
Even if we go by the definition of nothing is new under the sun, the film simply does not offer as much fun as it should to make up for all of its flaws. The fight sequences, which are supposed to be the most thrilling parts of the film, seem sluggish and unexciting. The film leans on several cliches to push its story forward, but rather than turning these generic plot devices into its favor, it only finds itself more unoriginal and rather idiotic at times. Every other scene makes you question how incompetent must the adults be to make these so convenient for these kids.
All in all, if you go in trying to find some sense in ‘The Sleepover’, you won’t. And for some, that just might be the thing they need in their choice of entertainment. You could watch it one time, salvage whatever fun you can out of it, mostly by picking on its numerous plotholes. If you don’t watch it, you are not missing anything. There is nothing you haven’t seen before here.
Rating: 2/5
Read More: Where Was The Sleepover Filmed?
