Orion Night: Charlie Kaufman shares his anxieties with DreamWorks (review)

The author of Eternal Sunshine is adapting a children’s book. Watch today on Netflix.

To say that we were waiting for the first children’s film Charlie Kaufman impatiently is an understatement, as the screenwriter of In the shoes of John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999) andEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) has touched us in the past. As a director too, moreover: his film I just want to end it (2020) dealt with the delicate subject of romantic breakups aptly, and its Anomalisa (2015), co-directed in stop motion with Duke Johnson, was a gem of spleen – since then, it’s impossible to hear “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” without visualizing its solitary heroine…

Anomalisa: a strange and superb fairy tale for adults

Disappointment with Orion’s Night is proportional to this undoubtedly excessive expectation. Concretely, the film does not lack qualities: it is intelligently aimed at young spectators without making their parents sink into boredom. But lacks “THE” something that could have turned it into a great film. A touch of madness? More technical mastery?

On paper, imagining this author being able to mix all his anxieties in the same story seemed obvious. We follow little Orion, who is so afraid of everything that he was advised to draw his fears to better face them. From sharks to love at first sight, to nothingness or not being able to find his words, the young boy struggles to calm down. What worries him the most? Black. So every evening, before going to sleep, he asks his parents to leave his door wide open, then turns on a multitude of night lights to try to get to sleep. Until the evening when Black himself takes him with him on a mission, in order to make him understand that there is nothing wrong with him. “wicked”that he is simply doing his job with his associates: Sweet Dreams, Sleep, Serenity, Insomnia and Funny Noise.

Charlie Kaufman here adapts Emma Yarlett’s book literally titled The Child Who Was Afraid of the Dark. He obviously brings his own touch to it: an original narration, the concept of which we won’t spoil here, which allows for great freedom of tone, well-felt reflections on human relationships, and a nice finale gently mocking modern SF films. It also offers him the possibility of not explaining everything, of letting certain notions take their course without completely understanding them (hello turtle!), which is refreshing at a time when the Hollywood tendency is rather towards over-explanation.

However, not everything works perfectly in this film, starting with… the animation. Whether in the design chosen for Noir, too close to the Sully of Monsters and co. (2001) to be original, sometimes really basic (for example on the characters’ hair), Orion’s Night lack of stunning visual ideas. There is this play between Night and Light, an effective concept on paper too, but never exploited visually in a truly stunning way. The same goes for the change of style as soon as Orion’s drawings come to life: it’s effective, but too déjà vu to surprise.

The animation was however designed by Mikros Images, who had done remarkable work on Captain Underpants (David Soren, 2017), already for DreamWorks Animation. Was the budget below ambition? Directors Sean Charmatz (known for his concept arts of Spongebob) and Tim Heitz (storyboarder of Trolls) did they lack an overall vision? It is in any case a shame for a film dealing with concepts as rich as dreams, nightmares and fears to be so unimpressive on this level.

On the background, Orion’s Night teeming with ideas. Yet, here too, few are completely pushed to the end. By multiplying the fears, the team inevitably ends up getting it right – the frightening nothingness, for example, makes for an interesting climax – but most of them are barely touched upon. Not to mention that the film constantly recalls previous works “high concepts”as Vice versa (2015) from Pixar or The five legends (2012), already designed by DreamWorks.

To summarize, we would have dreamed that Orion’s Night transports us, it entertains us without impregnating our minds more than that. We won’t have nightmares about it, that’s one thing.

Michel Gondry: “They always bring me back to Eternal Sunshine…”