This happened to me not two weeks ago while sitting at my desk. Something caught a snag of an old memory from a time before childhood, but after infancy. I spent the rest of my afternoon digging around frantically through my brain, searching the internet for clues with terms I attempted to mold as warmth became brief images and brief images became words. I looked and looked, but couldn’t find it. I earnestly wondered for hours if I had only dreamt such a feeling.

After work, I called my sister to ask for help. I told her about my ordeal, but that I could at least remember a small boy named “Nemo” and a bed that could move, somehow. She told me that I wasn’t dreaming and that it must involve something named “dreamland.” We went searching. It was not 10 seconds later that we had found it: Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland.

Turns out, I couldn’t have seen it at as young an age as I had thought, since the movie was released in the U.S. in 1992. I was not put off, however, and went straight to work finding a copy to watch so that I could relive a childhood memory. Fortunately, I found a copy, and began watching, immediately.

[-] Synopsis [-]

The main character of the story is Nemo, a young boy, maybe around 8 years old?, who is the only child in an upper-middle class home. The setting for his home looks to be early 1900’s and could be geographically located any place close to Marry Poppins. Nemo’s father is the type of character who is not too snooty to play with his son; he’s just too busy obsessing with his work. His mother doesn’t look to have a job other than fussing about Nemo and baking pies for him to sneak out of the ice box at night. Oh, and Nemo has a pet flying squirrel, Icarus, that chirps out enunciated English so well, we might as well be talking.

Nemo likes to spend most of his time in some sort of near-death coma, during which he dreams about some crazy place called Slumberland. Actually, he was gathered by a royal entourage lead by one Professor Genius who entered his upstairs window via dirigible and presented him with a royal invitation. When Nemo arrives, he’s greeted by a festival in his honor, meets a princess (Camille) who thinks his pajamas are cute, is lead around by a dirty, cigar smoking clown riding a giant crow (Flip), and is told by a toy train loving gargantuan of a king (King “Morphy” Morpheus) that he, Nemo, has been selected as the heir to the thrown of Slumberland. At this point, Morphy gives Nemo some sort of magical key that unlocks any door in Slumberland and is told there is one door he must promise to never, ever open.
So, later that night… Nemo opens that one door he promised not to ever open, lead into mischief by Flip, the dirty clown. The gala being held in honor of Nemo’s coronation is interrupted shortly after when an amorphous blob of darkness swallows King Morpheus. Everyone else is left unharmed, but curious as to who opened the door. Then they all simultaneously slapped their foreheads and walked slowly towards Nemo, mumbling his name like an undead horde.

Nemo wakes up in his bed and decides it was all a dream, but King Morpheus’ giant royal scepter of all things light and dreamy laying next to him in his bed says different. Disregarding the foreign object in his bed, Nemo goes down stairs to get some pie but upon opening the ice box, his house is flooded. So, he jumps on his bed and rides it through the water to the safety of a vast and featureless expanse of blue, surrounded by fog. There he bumps into Professor Genius who informs Nemo that Morphy is now a prisoner in Nightmareland. Nemo convinces the Prof. that they should use the power of the King’s staff to enter Nightmareland for a rescue operation, but the only person in Slumberland who knows how to get there is Flip, the dirty clown, who everyone hates… and who is being prepped to be shot out of a cannon by order of Princess Camille.

Nemo and Genius stop Flip from being the first clown in space and grab the princess, just to make sure all the principal characters are together, and head to Nightmareland.

Once in Nightmareland, the Princess is nearly drowned by weird, flippery creatures and the group stumbles into the three of the only four friendly goblins in the whole of evilness. Later, a group of flying monkeys take everyone away and Nemo is powerless to stop them.

Again, Nemo wakes up in his bed, and again with the scepter. This time, he also has the three friendly goblins with him and the fourth one falls from the sky. Nemo, the four things, and Icarus jump on the bed, at which point it grows legs and walks through the city to gallop into a giant vortex. After that, the bed choses to simply fly.

Nemo leads the group to the dark fortress center of Nightmareland where we don’t see many creatures, but we do get to see a freaky, flying, hammer-head manta-ray and the giant, bat-like evil king of all darkness. Using the scepter, the King Morpheus’ incantation (delivered from nightmare prison via good goblin, earlier), and Icarus like a music lyre, Nemo blasts the king of darkness into nothingness. Everyone captured is now safe, but Nemo is looking a bit on the dead side. So, Morpheus uses the scepter to bring him back to life. Next, everyone has a huge party as Nemo leaves Slumberland to wake up in his bed, leaving all of us to wonder if any of it ever really happened.

[-] Review [-]

This movie is definitely a fun one, but doesn’t quite rank with the likes of other epic animated movies form the past, like Miyazaki. There is an obvious mix of styles as the character designs look American, object motion looks Japanese and the environment looks of ambiguous origin. This alone makes Little Nemo a unique film to watch, but that does not mean it is necessarily the kind of animation you would like to see.

All of the characters are as memorable as the characters of, say, Adventures of the Gummi Bears. Not especially memorable, but not really all that forgettable. The four friendly goblins suffer the unfortunate circumstance of being completely flat characters. Flip, while memorable visually, is not so well remembered for his lines or voice acting (Mickey Rooney). Even Nemo isn’t very interesting; most of the time he’s screaming out garble about pajamas while trying to remember the incantation to use the scepter. Morpheus is a typical epic kind of character, like most any other king in a children’s movie, but still flat. Princess Camille definitely ranks most memorable as the most outspoken one of the bunch who is allowed to convey the most emotion. Camille laughs, cries, cuddles, insults, is sarcastic and even punches Flip in the face. Plus, at the risk of sounding somewhat pedophilic the combination of her voice, personality and physicality makes her very attractive.

The movie seems to move through a lot of story pretty quickly just so it can spend more time establishing moods for scenes other places. This is something I always dislike. I really don’t mind a longer movie if it means that all of the story is told. We are supposed to see connections between the real world and Slumberland based on subtle queues from the background and such. For instance, Nemo must like planes and dirigibles since they’re hanging in his room, but never focused on, hence why there are lots of balloons and blimps in Slumberland. Also, I feel as though the movie is trying to convey the sense that we are watching a dream, but it doesn’t quite get me there.

The world of Slumberland changes four times from pristine, to flat and neutral, to dark and evil, and back to pristine, again. Each of these changes are transitioned by Nemo waking in his bed with some element from the dream in hand. This should be like a dream in that the entire landscape changes drastically, without warning, and that Nemo’s mind is tricking him into seeing his room, but the dream persists even there, as if he were about to wake up, and then went back to dreaming, again.

The story is pretty classic good versus evil, and there is at least one lesson about keeping promises presented as a sort of theme throughout the movie. So, I guess there’s some substance there, but if I were to watch this movie as a new release, today, it would have to have some serious hype for me to recommend to any serious movie goers.

When it comes down to it, the only thing this movie has going for it is my infatuation with it from childhood. It gave me a lesson in the form of pure emotion that can never be expressed in words, but it can all be expressed in one scene of the film that happens near the very end: the kiss scene.

[-] The Kiss Scene [-]

The kiss scene is between Camille and Nemo. Nemo is just the guy. In almost any kiss scene, ever, the guy can be replaced, but Camille cannot. She has been established as a woman, essentially. Her qualities up to this point show that she is sensitive to feelings of others, aware of her duties to her kingdom, and in control of her emotions to a certain point, which makes her more personable than someone who always retains control. In this scene, Camille shows a myriad of emotion and messages through three simple acts.

[1] The first act is cuddling with Icarus who she expressed dislike with earlier in the movie. [2] The second act is shedding a tear while thanking Nemo. [3] The third act leaning out to kiss Nemo.

What this all means to me is that Camille knows she is a figment of Nemo’s imagination and that the whole of the events were a dream. She’s passing out kindness because she feels that this moment may be her last moment in existence, which she expresses by holding Icarus. When she tries to thank Nemo for creating the dream and letting her experience the adventure they shared, she means to dole out kindness as she did with Icarus, but she cannot. She sheds a tear because she realizes cognitively what she was feeling subconsciously: she will miss Nemo. So, finally, she leans out to kiss Nemo and to claim a bit of comfort for herself that makes life worth living, the kind that is shared between two people in one act of committed love and acceptance, the kind that, at this age and in the face of nonexistence, is also as pure and innocent as it can possibly be.

This may be fantastically over-romanticized, but it’s what I felt as a child and what I appreciate more, now, that I can assess Camille for her character qualities.

[-] In the End… [-]

I think that the movie is worth watching just to gain the knowledge and experience that goes along with, what looks to be, a fantastic comic strip spanning from 1905 to sometime in the 1920s. The original strip is now past the expiration of copyright protection and I plan on buying it form whoever may have it published. I’ll have to find out who’s got the latter strips.

If you want to find out more about the story behind the story, check out this wiki page.