Sunday, April 14, 2024

MSPIFF 2024: Day Dreaming (Movie Review)


The Minneapolis Flim Society along with The Main Cinema presents  The Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival 2024.   A yearly celebration of all the wonderful movies from around the world.  From April 11 through April 25 2024, I will be reviwing a different movie from the many   featured during this event.

Go to 

https://mspfilm.org  to learn more



Day Dreaming

Cast: Yue Hao, Tiantian Fan, Donghai Fang, 

Writer and Director: Zichuan Wang


This charming movie follows the day in the life of a young boy who was a very vivid and wild imagination.  While on his way to school he imagines that tall birds are theifs and that's why he was unable to turn in his homework assignment. When a teacher gives him a replacement to take home.  There is a creature that looks like a pile of crap who says that it loves to eat paper.  Also earlier that same teacher gets into a fight with an Alien because our hero imagines it as well.

Our student who is named Zhu Tong is very quick and comes up with very clever and ingenoius ways to get out of doing work.  It reminds me very much of how Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain's literary classic also did very much the same thing.  Except in our tale, he lacks the self esteem and confidence that  character had.  Zhu is very afraid to have his parents meet his teachers.  To the point that he will write a self evaluation paper to get out of it.  Combine this with a blink and you'll miss it moment when another classmate talks about the abuse her gets at home.  It made me question if Zhu's home life is the reason why he day dreams so much,  Those issues were put to rest at the end but it was odd to have it featured at all in this.  



Being that this is a China production.  There are a lot of moments you can tell were clearly there because the Government suggested it should be in there.  The propaganda is quite strong but it's not too overpowering that you can still have a fun time watching this fable.

I can imagine this being bought by a bigger studio for remake rights and to adapt it for a wider audience  but I still got a lot of enjoyment from this movie even if the culture was not my own.   

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