‘Wonder Park’ Emotionally Wrecked Me

Frequent moviegoers recognize the signs of an emotionally jarring children’s cartoon. To cynical viewers, the warnings are an inoculation to steel yourself against emotional manipulation: the slow build of a relationship with little to no dialogue and lighthearted music a là Up or recent Academy Award-winning short, Bao. For others, they’re a cue to lean in and get the tissues ready because here it comes. And while Wonder Park has many of the tell-tale cues from its opening montage to a too-perfect family, the message and resonance come from an unexpected place. Emotional Surprises Abound When a young girl named June learns her perfect mother is gravely ill in the film’s first act, you expect the heartstrings to thrum at her mother’s passing. That’s not Wonder Park though, as the film lives in the space just prior to the earth-shattering event of a loved one’s death. June and her mother had been partners in imagination. Together they created a fantastical theme park that June often wanted to recreate in real life, often with a destructive result to the neighborhood. It’s not until the fictional “Wonderland Park” becomes real that the movie brings in her childhood friends and June’s emotions are made clearer. Without her mother, June’s grief had given way to a preoccupation with health and safety, and unknowingly created a cloud in her heart that corrodes the joy she had inside her. That corrosion spells destruction to her friends, who are now real thanks to voices like John O…