Movie Review: Imaginary

1 star out of 5

I wanted to see a movie to clear my head, and I probably should’ve chosen the Dune sequel, as I’d been waiting for it, and it had been well reviewed, but… it just seemed like too much work. So I rolled the dice with Imaginary. And I crapped out.

The trailer hadn’t looked good. It is from the producers of M3GAN but is totally different because it’s about a stuffed bear instead of a talking doll. Also we learn in the trailer that the little kid has an imaginary friend except they keep showing the stuffed bear and aren’t imaginary friends, like, imaginary?

DeWanda Wise is the star; she was the pilot in Jurassic World: Dominion which I liked a lot yet didn’t mention her in my review. Still, she’s the main attraction here, showing some spunk, trying to liven up a movie that has precious little else going for it. DeWanda plays Jessica, stepmom to an eye-rolling teen and an extremely annoying young sister, the type that exists in bad movies but not real life. Jessica is having bad dreams so they do the most logical thing: They move into her childhood home. There, younger daughter finds a stuffed bear and I wish it was Ted because I’d been seeing commercials for the Ted TV series and though I haven’t seen either Ted movie and had no interest in the TV show, that bear seemed a lot more interesting than this one.

Bad things start happening but not the sort of scary bad things that would make the movie compelling/watchable. Poor Betty Buckley shows up and she’s absolutely slumming, must’ve needed to pay off an in-ground pool or make a parking-lot fender bender “go away” — anyway, here she’s an old-lady neighbor who used to babysit Jessica and she’s an expert in imaginary friends I think. I don’t know, I saw this a couple of weeks ago and it’s all a blur.

The movie is rated PG-13; I wish I’d noticed that before deciding to see Imaginary because there’s no real horror here. In fact, the film seems to aim even younger, with a whole stupid “world of imagination, but a child’s imagination is the most powerful gift of all” extended scene.

I gave the movie a half star more than it really deserved (a full star on IMDb!) because there’s a decent little bit very late in the film.

Is Dune 2 still playing?