Film Review — Sketch

Now here’s a pleasant surprise: The best live-action family-friendly film I’ve seen so far this year. Sketch, written and directed by Seth Worley, is a surreal, exciting, funny, poignant gem that feels tailor-made for my sensibilities. I think a lot of that has to do with how the film tackles the thorny subject of making peace with one’s dark side, and how it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to express said dark side in ways that don’t harm others, especially during times of grief and sadness. I wish some of the schoolteachers who were horrified by my fiction during my childhood had taken a similarly wise view, but I’ll spare you the autobiography.

Sketch concerns the Wyatt family, comprising the father, Taylor (Tony Hale), his son Jack (Kue Lawrence), and his younger sister, Amber (Bianca Belle). The latter has taken to drawing disturbing images of alarming creatures gruesomely attacking those she doesn’t like, including classmate Bowman (Kalon Cox), who constantly pesters her on the school bus. Complaints inevitably reach Amber’s teachers, though a school therapist recognises her drawings as a positive means of self-expression amid grief concerning her recently deceased mother. Of…