Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Sleepover’ on Netflix, a Daffy Family Action-Comedy About the Wackiest All-Nighter Ever

Netflix’s family-movie content churn chugs on with The Sleepover, a wacky live-action mid-budget miscellany of slapstick and one-liners. It’s one of those my-mom-is-actually-a-(fill-in-the-blank) stories about former lives that are kind of double lives, except funny instead of upsetting. Some of these types of movie sillinesses work and some disintegrate like toilet tissue in a tornado; let’s see how this one fares, shall we?

THE SLEEPOVER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Kevin (Maxwell Simkins) is full of manure, in the sense that he makes up a fantastical family history for his middle-school class presentation and gets slapped with a redo-it-or-flunk mandate from his humorless broomstick of a teacher. He dances in the boy’s room like he don’t give a care at all — as we all should dance, frankly — and ends up teased when video of his hot moves ends up on the internet. His mom, Margot (Malin Akerman), deflects his bullies during her stint as LUNCH DUTY VOLUNTEER, which we know she’s doing because she’s wearing a nametag that says LUNCH DUTY VOLUNTEER on it.

His sister, Clancy (Sadie Stanley of Kim Possible fame), is like 15 or something, a gifted cellist and a victim of oppression because her mom won’t let her have a cell phone. Their dad, Ron (Ken Marino) is a mortifying dweeb of a pastry chef who’d singlehandedly spearhead a pop-cultural revival of Paula Cole’s Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? if he could. They’re a typical suburban family with a dog and a house with a yard with dog poo in it, although I’m just making that assumption, because miraculously for a kid’s movie, there’s no mention of dog poo, not even once.

It’s Friday, and Clancy wants to go to a party put on by her crush, but she gets grounded for mouthing off; her best pal Mim (Cree Cicchino) therefore stages a sneakout. Kevin has the thing in the title of the movie with his buddy Lewis (Lucas Jaye), whose mother makes a comically elongated point about him having to wear his special underpants with the built-in moisture alarm. It’s a typical evening — they order pizza, the boys camp out in the backyard, Clancy tiptoes out the back door, two black-clad rogues bust in and take Margot and Ron away at knife and/or gunpoint, a Witness Protection Plan rep shows up to explain to the kids that Margot was once a master thief who turned informant and started a new life as a boring suburban mom, etc. Thus kickstarted is an action-comedy romp that surely seems like it might get so loony, it’ll need a dance party or similar family-bonding denouement. Which it might fulfill or it might not, NO SPOILAGE HERE.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Sleepover is a MADCAP BLEND of The Pacifier, Unaccompanied Minors, Parental Guidance, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and other such glossy family comedies we probably mostly forgot existed and would turn up on cable stations if we still had cable.

Performance Worth Watching: The unsung heroine here is Cicchino, who shows a bit of understated confidence in her ability to generate laughs. She’s not a scene-stealer — more of a scene-booster.

Memorable Dialogue: Here’s a painstakingly curated sampling of the film’s choice one-liners:

“Ninjas just stole your parents!” — Lewis

“We found Mom’s Batcave!” — Kevin

“I’m NOT going to jail. I have lunch duty on Monday!” — Margot

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I think I’ll blame pandemic brainmelt for why I generally enjoyed The Sleepover, even laughing out loud a few times. But just to be clear, this is a stupid, stupid movie, full of cliches, dumb jokes, predictable twists and very ridiculous things, including a wholly unnecessary scene of excessive vomiting. But the movie has a ramshackle charm that encourages an otherwise rational human being to assert that its creators and cast seem to be having fun up there on the screen, therefore making it easier to ride the wave of its genial mess of a plot and warmly rendered characters than it would be to dig in and resist it. So it goes.

I liked how Akerman, after Margot’s previous life as a whuppin’-ass thief-slash-spy is revealed, charges around authoritatively in formalwear and heels. I liked how Stanley gamely leads the kid cast, playing the straight person among the goofball comic-relief types, and how they all mostly avoid the annoyingly broad affectations of so many young actors in Disneyesque comedies like this. I liked how Joe Manganiello, as the chiseled steak from Margot’s romantic past, plays his single-note character with a twinkle in his eye. I liked how this thing didn’t devolve into yet another barrage of social media gags and bully-nerd character dynamics. I liked how it doesn’t seem to give a rip if it adheres to one set of genre conventions or another, haphazardly sampling from a bunch of them. I liked how Marino’s doofus character seems to be a decent dad and supportive husband despite All of This, although maybe that makes him a milquetoast pushover? Maybe I should stop praising this thing with faint damning now, before I change my mind on this recommendation.

Our Call: STREAM IT. As harebrained, mostly clean, overly convoluted, somewhat hyperactive, kinda funny, family-friendly movies-that-need-a-quiet-place-to-calm-down-a-little-bit go, The Sleepover is wholly watchable. It’s not exactly memorable or original, but you could do way worse.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Sleepover on Netflix