In Your Dreams Is The Rare Kids’ Movie That Actually Gets The Messiness Of Family Right

Growing up as a child of divorce in the '90s, I always felt a little bit like an outlier; my parents were one of only a handful in our small town who had split. But even heavier than just having anxiety about being "different" was all of the emotion wrapped up in watching my parents' marriage come apart at the seams in front of me. Which is why it was so refreshing to watch Netflix's new animated movie In Your Dreams.

The film follows 12-year-old Stevie and her little brother, Elliot, who discover a magical book that allows them to make their wildest dreams come true. Like, literally, their dreams. With their parents' marriage on the rocks, they devise a plan to seek out the Sandman through the dream world, hoping that he can grant their wish to return to a happier time for the whole family.

It's not your typical "tied-up-with-a-bow" animated movie… and that's exactly what makes it so good.

And no, your kids don't have to personally relate to that part of the movie to enjoy it, although odds are high they know at least one person in their life who does. On the surface, In Your Dreams has everything you'd hope for from an animated family movie: bright and colorful visuals (please someone take me to Breakfast Town), humor that'll have everyone cracking up (your kids will definitely be asking for a wisecracking toy giraffe named Baloney Tony after this), and a heartwarming story of the bond between siblings.

Besides, who among us hasn't wished they could control their dreams before?

"Dreams are such a universal human experience," Director Alex Woo told me during a junket for In Your Dreams. "Everybody in the world dreams. Everybody throughout time has dreamed. We still don't really know why, which makes it great fodder for fiction and mythology and exploring stories."

What our dreams can teach us

Underneath all of that lies an incredible opportunity for parents: diving into how we talk about dreams and nightmares and challenges with our kids.

Woo mentioned something in our convo that stuck with me: Often, the moments he's learned the most from "felt like nightmares" while they were happening. Those are the times when everything is going wrong, when life feels like the opposite of what you want — but that's where real growth happens.

In the movie, that idea unfolds in the tug-of-war between the Sandman and Nightmara, the queen of nightmares, played by Gia Carides. The Sandman offers cozy dreams. He offers comfort and wish-fulfillment. But it isn't real. Nightmare, on the other hand, is the one who shakes Stevie and Elliot awake. She challenges them to dismantle their fears.

"I hope [kids] sort of feel a wisdom from her, that they're not completely terrified of her, but that they're listening to her guidance," Carides shared. "She definitely wakes them up from dreaming. She's kind of asking them to face reality. She's kind of like a tough love mentor."

Letting a preteen girl sit with her feelings

As the eldest daughter of divorced parents myself, I couldn't help but feel happy for all the other little eldest-daughter Stevies out there who will watch this movie and feel seen. And who will be validated in feeling sad or angry or whatever they're feeling.

A tightly wound perfectionist big sister, Stevie is absolutely not OK with her parents' marriage cracking. We see her upset a lot. She snaps, she slams, she cries — basically, she has all the big, prickly feelings many preteens have when life feels out of control.

Woo admits that he worried at first it might be too much, so they screened the film for child psychologists.

"They were like, you definitely need to keep that in the movie," he said. They told him this is exactly how many kids, especially preteen girls, respond when their parents are struggling: angry, scared, and sort of convinced it's their job to fix everything.

It's rare to see a preteen girl's emotional reality handled this honestly in animation. Stevie isn't the comic relief or the chill daughter. She's complicated, and that's OK. The film never punishes her for that.

Parents as people, not villains or heroes

Any parent, whether their relationship is all smooth sailing or has experienced some choppy waters, can appreciate how In Your Dreams lets parents be real, imperfect, just-figuring-it-out-as-we-go people.

"Dad represents a lot of us," Simu Liu said of his character, who can't quite let go of his big dream to be a musician. "If I give up on my dreams, what example am I setting for my kids?" At the same time, he admits Dad "could do to be a little more realistic" — as he put it, the truth probably lies somewhere in between.

Cristin Milioti loved that her character, Mom, is warm but also does her best to set boundaries and advocate for herself. "I appreciated that it felt very real and that they were willing to explore a very real and nuanced moment in a marriage in a giant animated kids' film," she told me. She hopes the movie might become a touchstone for difficult conversations and difficult moments in a family's history.

This isn't a story where the parents magically stop fighting and everything resets to picture-perfect. The ending is hopeful, but it's not wrapped in a bow. The marriage is still a work in progress. The family is still figuring it out. Which, frankly, is the most honest ending you could show a kid.

How to watch In Your Dreams with your kids

In Your Dreams is fun and funny and full of things kids love. But it does also open the door to start convos that can feel impossible to initiate otherwise.

Here are a few questions you might ask afterwards:

• "When Stevie or Elliot got scared about their parents, did anything feel familiar to you?"
• "Do you ever feel like it's your job to keep everyone happy in our family?"
• "What part of the dream world would you want to visit — and what do you think your own nightmares might be trying to tell you?"
• "Did any of the grown-ups in the movie remind you of us, in good ways or hard ways?"

This movie may be full of monsters made from pancakes and laser-farting giraffes, but at its heart, it tackles a big, scary thing many kids could already be facing: the fear that the family they know is about to change.

What In Your Dreams does — beautifully — is show kids they're not alone in feeling it, and show parents that maybe the bravest thing we can do is stop pretending everything's fine and start talking about the not-so-dreamy stuff together.