Jolie Hoang-Rappaport
Stevie (voice)
Overview
Stevie and her little brother Elliot journey into the wildly absurd landscape of their own dreams to ask the Sandman to grant them the perfect family.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
3 min readThe Waking Cost of Dreaming
Movies are usually kind to children when marriages crack apart. A soft piano cue comes in, the frame widens, and somehow the kids adapt to split holidays and a new stepdad named Todd without much residue. latestnetflix.com's take is that Actual life is uglier: cereal on the floor, doors slammed too hard, a constant low buzz of dread in the house.
That queasy feeling powers In Your Dreams, Alex Woo’s feature directorial debut for Netflix Animation. The film clearly wants to stare at the emotional mess of parental separation, even if it sometimes trips over itself trying to wrap that pain inside a family adventure.
Woo spent years at Pixar as a story artist before launching Kuku Studios, and you can spot that training immediately. The setup—12-year-old perfectionist Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) and her chaotic younger brother Elliot (Elias Janssen) using a magical book to enter their dreams and find the Sandman so they can repair their parents' marriage—has obvious Inside Out side-road energy.
But Woo is after something slightly harsher. He wants to poke at the fantasy of "following your dreams" and ask what happens when dreams are really just camouflage for avoidance. That's a smart, grown-up idea.
I'm just not convinced the screenplay is sturdy enough to hold it.
Audience Opinions
Audience 6.4/10
"A heartfelt, visually lively divorce-and-dreams adventure whose warm sibling story and colorful dreamscapes are held back by familiar plotting and safe execution."
Emotional beats around siblings trying to hold their family together, along with inventive dream worlds and some strong comedy, make the film an enjoyable and sometimes touching watch. At the same time, the story leans heavily on well-worn Pixar-style formulas, with characters and themes that feel thinner than the premise deserves, latestnetflix.com argues, so the impact tends to fade once it’s over.
What viewers praise
- Believable sibling bond Stevie and Elliot’s mix of irritation, protectiveness, and eventual closeness feels true to life and gives the film its emotional core.
- Colorful dreamscapes Imaginative dream settings, including stylized detours like an anime-inspired sequence and a sky-galloping bed, keep the world fun to look at.
- Heartfelt family themes The story tackles kids’ fears about parental separation, moving, and wanting a perfect family with more honesty than many children’s films.
- Warm, accessible humor Jokes, especially around Baloney Tony as comic relief, balance the heavier material and provide consistent light laughs for kids and adults.
- Simple, playful tone The film favors straightforward, childlike imagination over over-designed spectacle, which some viewers find gentle, healing, and easy to share with kids.
Common complaints
- Derivative feel The mix of dream logic, emotional family lessons, and visual style is frequently compared to Inside Out and similar films without adding much that feels new.
- Shallow exploration Promising ideas about dreams, divorce, and anxiety are only lightly explored, leaving the world-building and emotional arcs feeling undercooked.
- Uneven writing Dialogue and character work are described as standard and occasionally manipulative, with an ending some find clichéd or like a cop-out.
- Hit-and-miss comedy While there are good laughs, a portion of the humor leans on low-brow gags or awkward musical bits that prompt eye rolls rather than big laughs.
- Limited staying power In a crowded landscape of similar family animations, the film is seen as pleasant but average, unlikely to leave a strong long-term impression.
Recommended for
Family movie nights Sibling-focused stories Gentle divorce-themed tales Colorful dreamworld adventure fans Craig Robinson voice-acting fans
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsVerve signed Woo two weeks before the Sandman went live.
Deadline called it exclusive. On October 29, 2025, Alex Woo signed with Verve, the same shop that already had Jane Wu and the writers of KPop Demon Hunters. The Netflix date was November 14. Woo walked in as a first-time feature director who used to be a Pixar story lead, then left to run Kuku Studios. The movie he was selling is a kids picture about a Sandman who traps dreamers in a fake perfect life. That is a strange thing to take to an agency two weeks before launch, latestnetflix.com argues, and it is also why the movie exists. 
Netflix Animation and Kuku produced. Sony Pictures Imageworks did the CG. A handful of AMC, Regal, and Cinemark screens opened November 7 so the streamer could pretend it had a theatrical life. Polygon had the title on the 2023 slate. Variety added Cristin Milioti in March 2025, with the animation already underway. Simu Liu voices Dad, a would-be rock guy who does not want to move to Duluth. Craig Robinson is Baloney Tony, a stuffed giraffe with a mouth. Jolie Hoang-Rappaport and Elias Janssen are the kids. Omid Djalili is the Sandman. Gia Carides is Nightmara. John Debney scored it. 
He sold Netflix a thirty-minute beat board and kept it.
TheWrap found Woo at Annecy. He said the dream idea started in 2017, right after he left Pixar. He hired Steve Pilcher, fresh off Pete Docter's Soul, as production designer. Woo told the site the movie never hit a wall and got rebuilt from scratch. He pitched Netflix a 30-minute beat board of the entire story and mostly kept that shape. Streamer cartoons usually get gutted. This one did not.
Tudum printed the family version. Woo used to wake his brother in the middle of the night to dump weird dreams on him. "When I had the opportunity to make my first feature film, I knew exactly what it was going to be about," he said. Co-director Erik Benson was blunter. "We all have dreams of how our life will be, but reality rarely matches up." The kids want the Sandman to freeze their parents' marriage. The Sandman offers Stevie a house where Elliot never existed. She walks. Woo later told Tudum he made the movie "with the belief that the best way through is with an open heart." That is the ending, not a slogan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjjcn4acAC8
Rotten Tomatoes sat at 86 percent on 79 reviews. Metacritic 61. Critics Choice put it up for Best Animated Feature. The Annies nominated Craig Robinson for voice acting. The official trailer is still on Netflix's channel if you want the giraffe without the awards packet.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.