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Where Slumberland truly shines is with its cast. While Slumberland is one of Barkley’s first feature credits, along with Spirited, the young actress already shows she can deal with a huge range of emotions. And while Slumberland’s story can feel bloated, Barkley’s Nemo is the emotional anchor that holds everything together. The biggest surprise of Slumberland, though, is Momoa, who embraces a dad energy we didn’t know he had.

Lawrence’s latest is fine for its don’t-over-think-it standards, and while it’s glossier than it is deep, it’s at least charted through with a roller coaster’s engineering. There’s something comforting about a movie that has the true ease of a fantastical dream, and for “Slumberland” that fleeting excitement may be enough.

Orienteering from an unsure script, Slumberland’s uninventive visual language dithers around in unreality while leaving its feet firmly planted in the saddest parts of the real world.

Slumberland is nothing if not an exhausting roller-coaster of missed opportunities, virtually all of which stem from the film’s lack of a solid emotional foundation.

For all the surface wildness of Lawrence’s Slumberland, it’s about as rule-following a family pic as you can find.

Playing like an amalgam of Monsters, Inc. and Inception, this family-friendly fantasy thankfully doesn’t put audiences to sleep, but neither does it draw us into its dreamy sensation.

Slumberland is not a terrible movie and it may very well spark your imagination or tug at your heartstrings (though sweet kids crying over dead parents is about as low-hanging as the fruit can get). But it also could have been so much more had it not gotten so bogged down in its own superfluous flash, which, by the end, just feels exhausting.

Slumberland is stronger at conjuring elaborate dream worlds than it is at crafting a satisfying emotional foundation, which is generally true of Lawrence’s past projects as well.

No one ever captured the hearts and minds of children without taking some big swings. Francis Lawrence doesn't make incompetent movies, but his work rarely feels inspired. "Slumberland" is no different. Uninspired. And when your film is about dreams, uninspired is the last thing you want to be.

Overall this remarkably glum, logy, convoluted and unengaging movie has only a vestigial relation to McCay’s work. McCay fans should beware. So should everyone else.