A girl’s anger and grief get personified — or monster-fied — in “Sketch,” a children’s film that fares better with its nimble special effects than its clunky dramatics. Amber (Bianca Belle), an artistic elementary school student whose mother has recently died, catches a counselor’s attention with a violent drawing of a classmate. Surely Amber doesn’t want the real bully in her illustration impaled. The counselor, seeing creativity as a productive outlet for anger, encourages Amber to commit her disturbing fantasies to the page.
Around the same time, her brother, Jack (Kue Lawrence), discovers that a punch-blue pond near their home can heal wounds, mend objects and perhaps even give them life. Naturally, Amber’s sketchbook is due for a dunk that will turn the stomping, blood-guzzling, spidery creatures of her imagination into tangible reality.
The monsters, which leave paintball-like markings wherever they go and explode in bursts of colored chalk when squashed — one even exhales glitter — are the most inventive parts of “Sketch,” the feature directorial debut of Seth Worley, who has worked in visual effects. He also wrote and edited the movie, and it’s in his characterization of adults that “Sketch” is shakiest.
While the children are permitted a measure of psychology, the older characters, especially Amber and Jack’s mopey, klutzy father (overplayed by Tony Hale), are treated as earnest mouthpieces for the story’s morals. A guiding influence of “Sketch” is clearly Steven Spielberg, but part of the secret of his formula is that parents are rarely squeaky-clean. They have demons, too.
Sketch
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters.
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