Being a kid is hard enough without adding the loss of a parent to your already overstretched emotional bandwidth. This is something writer-director Seth Worley knows well and explores in his wondrous family film “Sketch.”
When I wrote about the film after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, I praised it for being a “big, warm-hearted family film” and compared it to the ‘80s and ‘90s family adventure films that I grew up with, like “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” or “Jumanji.” In the year since, I lost my own Dad. Let me tell you, in the wake of that grief, this perfect little film hits even harder.
The premise is relatively simple as far as fantasies go. As widower Taylor (Tony Hale, never better) prepares the family home for sale, his daughter Amber (Bianca Belle) begins working through her grief through drawing—specifically by creating increasingly violent monsters with complicated backstories. Hewn from marker and crayon and glitter, her drawings are somehow equally as cute as they are gruesome. Amber’s slightly older brother, Jack, is worried about his sister and always tries to fix everything for her, while ignoring his own grief.
One day, Jack finds a magic pond behind their house that fixes his broken cellphone after he drops it. He soon gets the idea to bring their mother’s ashes to the pond, thinking that if she comes back, everything will be fixed. Amber follows him to the pond, only for her notebook to fall in instead. Soon, their school bus and town are overrun with Amber’s phantasmagoric creations, like Dave, a giant blue monster that has snake legs and googly eyes, or the red spiders with eyes she calls “eyeders” that get their kicks stealing everything that they can. Worst yet is a dark, hooded being that seems to be able to draw more creatures, sewing even more mayhem.
These creatures are animated with such meticulous care and detail in their creation that some leave puffs of chalk dust in their wake, while others can be destroyed simply by placing them in water, much like washable markers. The tension in the scenes where Jack, Amber, and their school friends face off with the creatures is tense and silly, reminding the viewer of what it was like to play make-believe as a kid, but really, truly believe the scenario you had created.
Meanwhile, as Taylor races to find his kids amongst all this creative chaos, he has a much-needed heart-to-heart with his sister Liz (D’Arcy Carden), who can see the cracks in their broken family more acutely than he can. Early in the film, she tries to ask Taylor why he’s hidden all the photos of Amber and Jack’s mother, urging him not to erase her from their young lives. Later, as they run from a monstrously enhanced cat, she compliments Amber’s drawings, telling Taylor that maybe he should, “Worry less about the girl who is drawing her pain and more about the boys who are ignoring theirs.”
Worley masterfully parallels the brother-sister relationships between the children, Amber and Jack, and their grown-up counterparts, Taylor and Liz. There is just the right amount of bickering mixed in with unflappable love and a deep concern for each other’s well-being. In both ages, I could feel echoes of my relationship with my slightly older brother, especially in the wake of our father’s death.
The writer-director’s sharp script examines the many ways that the pain of grief can manifest, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and how it can fracture relationships if you let it. But his film is not all dark. It’s edited with a delightful humor, often landing a laugh with a quick cut or sly pan. The kids are written like real kids, with jokes that run the gamut from absurd wordplay to playful potty humor.
Bianca Belle is a wonder as Amber, her sadness and her pain reminded me so much of myself as a child with rage issues who never quite fit in with any of my peers, and who turned to art for release. I only wish I had someone as clear-eyed as Jack (who, when it is revealed that the dark creature is her warped self-portrait, tells her that she is not an evil person, even if she draws some evil drawings) to pull me out of my darkness. Or even Taylor, who tells her, “Life is all about balancing the good and the bad; if you don’t carry the good with you, it just makes the bad stronger.” Honestly, that’s a lesson I’m still battling with to this day.
A film like this can be so therapeutic, both for the little kids like Amber who are already touched by pain and darkness during their tender younger years, their parents who might see them and help them early on, and even adults like me who still carry their childhood pain deep inside them.
Art is so powerful, a magic force that can transform you from the inside out. “Sketch” is a beautiful ode to that power, in its many forms, and a reminder that it’s never too late to work on your pain, not to let it overpower you, and to let the light inside you shine.
