HISTORICALLY, Angel Studios has strong associations with the Mormons. It aims to produce and/or distribute faith-filled movies such as The King of Kings (Arts, 4 April) or, at least, inspiring “values-based” entertainment, using “the power of storytelling to amplify light”, focusing on “what is good, beautiful and worth sharing”.
The nearest that Sketch (Cert.12A) ever gets to any biblical references is the phrase (repeatedly used) “I give you my covenant,” when characters make solemn promises. Divine covenants involve God’s remaining faithful to an agreement even when other parties fail to. In this new film, the human element can sometimes be rather flaky. The point being made is that, despite a frequent inability to live up to our best intentions, grace (though never called that) continues to abound, turning darkness into light.
Ten-year-old Amber (Bianca Belle) and her older brother, Jack (Kue Lawrence) have recently lost their mother, Ally. Looking after them, as best he can, is their father Taylor Wyatt (the actor and comedian Tony Hale). Nobody is coping with grief that well. While the male members of the family are in denial — they have removed all photographs of Ally — the daughter tries to examine her pain through art. Heeding Taylor’s maxim “You can’t control your inbox but you can control your outbox,” she draws in her sketchbook savage monsters looking almost as attractive as they are ghastly.
The movie has a resemblance to Pixar’s animation feature Inside Out, in which a girl’s emotional turmoil is personified. Adults begin especially worrying about Amber when she draws a picture of herself stabbing Bowman (Kalon Cox), a classmate, who torments her in a variety of ways, from hair-pulling to joining in private conversations. Hale is particularly skilful in portraying a well-meaning but bewildered widower. Nevertheless, his character is not entirely ineffectual. Looking at the offending picture with his daughter, he counsels her to attach a positive drawing to the evil one. “Life is all about balancing the good and the bad; if you don’t carry the good with you, it just makes the bad stronger.”
The plot develops some well-worn narratives from the myth of Pandora’s box to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, when the sketchbook accidentally falls into what turns out to be a magical lake. Emerging from Amber’s drawing are gargantuan creatures intent on destruction. A series of near-escapes follows, leading to a final confrontation of good and evil.
One could argue that the ensuing chaos is all the fault of Amber’s fantasies, but their aunt Liz (D’Arcy Carden) has told Taylor to worry less about the girl drawing her pain and more about the boys ignoring theirs. Sketch also picks up on loss as motivating heroic acts of goodness. Like Batman, Superman, and Spiderman, these children are (in this instance, maternal) orphans striving to defeat evil. A covenantal relationship in the Wyatt family tacitly reflects God’s unchanging love. The writer-director, Seth Worley, has, under the semblance of a romp in the Jurassic Park tradition, pulled off an entertainment resonating with Christian values.
