Netflix’s The Sleepover – Lower Tier Netflix Family Fare (Early Review)

Netflix’s original content is truly a spectrum. One on end, there’s grand epics such as The Irishman and Marriage Story while on the other end lies such atrocities as The Old Guard and Coffee and Kareem. Recently, Netflix’s original content has fared on the lesser side of that spectrum and their newest addition The Sleepover. another mindless kid’s film is no different. This failed family-friendly action film provides absolutely nothing new or enticing enough to make it worth checking out—unless you’re nine years old.

The story of The Sleepover involves a brother and sister named Clancy (Sadie Stanley) and Kevin (Maxwell Simkins) who discover that their seemingly normal mother Margot (Akerman) is actually a former renowned thief now in the witness protection program. When she suddenly leaves for one last job, Clancy and Kevin along with their two friends go on an adventure to find their mom and uncover the truth. Basically, this film once again follows that same formula for the most part which each new film being just a little worse than its predecessor. Perhaps the film may have worked at some point in the past but has now been done to death.

Meanwhile, The Sleepover‘s extremely generic script didn’t exactly help its case. It simply guides characters from point A to point B in a painfully predictable way, resulting in an incredibly tedious watch that is sure to test most audiences. The humor is extremely dated, lousy, and childish making every joke feel more like a jab. The performances are robotic though not in a weak or unbelievable way but rather based on the unfortunate fact that every single character is so blatantly one dimensional and reminiscent of all the poorly written child characters of past Netflix originals. Even Manganiello, who plays Margot’s companion manages to be one of the least likeable characters in the film. His arrogant, over-masculine performance is arguably the polar opposite of what the writers surely intended. While the minimal, slapstick-dependant action necessarily isn’t necessarily a horrible thing, its horrible choreographing and direction makes it come off as pathetic. On top of all that, the film has absolutely zero idea what it wants to be.

Obviously, anyone aged twelve and up will be outside the demographic of The Sleepover, so the question is: Will kids flock to it? The answer is probably not. The pacing and unnecessary dialogue is likely to leave young kids bored, while the older ones will find themselves rolling their eyes at the overall cringe factor. It may draw the attention of parents plopping their kids in front of a screen but does that really mean anything?

At the end of the day, this crowded subgenre of children’s films has had quite a bad reputation and The Sleepover is sure to fit right in. Nothing whatsoever about this film will stand out while its overbearing run time should be enough to knock any child out and enough for parents to rip their hair out. Your sleepover deserves much better than this.

still courtesy of Netflix

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Jaeden Noel