Sketch (2025)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Doodle Bugs

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

A wonderful movie with amazing monsters, Seth Worley's smartly written, sharply edited kid-friendly fantasy tale Sketch is funny, exciting, great-looking, and packed with positive messages about expressing feelings.

Ten-year-old Amber Wyatt (Bianca Belle) has been going through a hard time since the death of her mother. When she makes an alarming drawing depicting the death of an obnoxious schoolmate, Bowman (Kalon Cox), her father Taylor (Tony Hale) is called in to her school. A counselor advises her to continue to work through her feelings by drawing.

Meanwhile, Amber's older brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) has discovered a mysterious pond in the woods that has magical properties: it heals his cut hand and repairs his broken phone. While considering putting his mother's ashes into the pond, Jack struggles with Amber, and her notebook falls in instead. Before long, Amber's monsters begin coming to life and attacking the town. It's up to Amber, Jack, and Bowman to save the day.

A feature writing and directing debut by Worley, Sketch wins us over almost right away with a scene in the counselor's office. Hale's comic reaction to Amber's violent drawing, the counselor's assertion that Amber should continue drawing (rather than being punished), the introduction of the notebook with a curious cat on the cover, and the way Amber says "do you have a pen?" before smash-cutting to title, come together just about perfectly.

The movie instinctively sidesteps all the little pitfalls that can make kid-friendly adventures like these shrill and irritating, and finds ways to be funny and lovable. Even the Bowman character, whose entire job is to be shrill and irritating, is funny and lovable. The kid performers are all just right, neither overacting nor underacting, Hale finds a nice balance between his style of comedy and an empathetic soul, and D'Arcy Carden ("Janet" on The Good Place) adds another layer of snappy humor and insightful emotion.

Best of all are the monsters. The visual FX are deliberately imperfect, mimicking the style of a child's drawing, in pencil, markers, crayons, or chalk, with rough edges. The colorful smears and smudges of monster tracks (or remains) become enchanting decorations on all the sets, clothes, and faces. Sketch is a special movie that could easily become a much re-watched favorite.