Childhood asks a lot of us. You are small, the world is big, and your heart is still figuring out where to put everything it feels. Add the absence of a parent to that delicate equation and the day begins to weigh twice as much as it did before. Seth Worley understands that terrain. His family movie Sketch is not simply another whimsical adventure. It is a gentle and bold look at how kids carry grief, how families try to make it through together, and how art can become a compass when the map is torn.
I did not come to Sketch as a blank slate. I grew up on weekend adventures where ordinary kids met extraordinary messes. I wore out the tapes of those classics from the eighties and the nineties where siblings bickered, parents struggled, and magic pushed open the door anyway. There is some of that spirit here for sure, but the glow is warmer and the stakes are more intimate. Somewhere along the way I also lost my father, and because of that this movie landed in a deeper place than I expected. It surprised me. It helped a little. It really did.
The setup seems simple at first. In a quiet neighborhood a recently widowed dad named Taylor is trying to pack up a life. He is played by Tony Hale with a softness that sneaks up on you. There is a to do list in his mind and a clumsy hope that if he can check enough boxes the pain will quiet down. His children do not move at the same pace. Jack, the older son, has appointed himself the household repairman, the fixer of what breaks, the one who will keep his sister from falling apart. Amber, younger and sharp and dreamy, turns to her sketchbook. She draws monsters. Not vague monsters either. She gives them names and pasts and jokes and rage. They are tender and terrifying at the same time, covered in crayon fuzz, glitter freckles, marker armor. If you have ever used art to hold your emotions in place for a minute, you might recognize what she is doing without anyone needing to explain it.
Jack stumbles on something he is not ready for. Behind the house, past the tired grass and the old fence, there is a pond that is not just a pond. He drops his broken phone in it and fishes out a working one. Fixing is his thing, so you can almost hear the gears click into a risky idea. If the water can put a smashed screen back together, maybe it can do something bigger. He thinks about ashes and wishes and what it would mean to make the worst thing untrue, even for a second. He is a good brother but he is also a son who misses his mother so badly it stings to breathe sometimes. That is a mistake many of us would make in his shoes. No judgement here.
Amber follows him. It happens fast. Her notebook slips and goes under the surface before anyone can stop it. The ripples are quiet. The aftermath is not. Soon the town finds itself crawling with her creations, the good, the goofy, and the ones that should have stayed on paper. A creature named Dave arrives, huge and blue, with legs that move like snakes and eyes too big to stay still. A swarm of little red spiders with eyes on their backs, which Amber calls eyeders, scuttle around collecting things. They do not care whose things they take. Then there is a hooded figure who does not speak much and seems to carry a pencil like a wand. That one does not just cause trouble. It makes more of it by drawing new beings into the world. It knows what Amber knows. That is the scary part.
Worley and his team put such love into how these creatures look. They feel handmade and alive at the same time, as if a drawing fell off the fridge and grew legs. One leaves little puffs of chalk dust with every step, like a comet that forgot to check its pockets before it left. Another wilts in water because of the ink used to bring it to life. The rules of this magic make sense in a way that does not need a long explanation. Kids will get it. So will the adults who remember smearing markers on construction paper, then trying to erase the mess with a wet napkin that only made more colors instead of less.
The set pieces are alive with that blend of fear and fun that childhood conjures so well. A school bus scene that turns into a rolling obstacle course. A chase through town where ideas and monsters keep one upping each other. The humor is not glued on top. It is woven into the cuts and the framing and the timing, so a small pause, a quick pan, or a character stepping just out of frame can deliver a laugh without undercutting the danger. It feels like play and like stakes both, which is exactly how it feels when you are nine and the game you started in the backyard suddenly matters more than anything.
But the spectacle is not what makes Sketch linger. The family does that. Taylor is doing his best, which is a sentence loaded with both love and failure. He wants to protect his children by controlling what they see. He even hides photos of their mother because he thinks that will make it easier to move forward. His sister Liz, played with bright clarity by D Arcy Carden, will not let him get away with that. She sees what he is trying not to see. When she points out the empty frames and asks him why the house looks like a museum that decided to skip the person who tied it all together, it stings him and us. She also tries to remind him that pain does not always shout. Sometimes it shuts the door and gets to work in silence, which is what Jack keeps doing while he worries about everyone else. At one point she tells him, in that blunt way only someone who loves you can manage, that maybe the kid who is drawing her hurt is not the only one who needs attention. The boys who pretend they are fine can be in just as much trouble.
The movie quietly sets up two pairs of siblings that mirror each other. Jack and Amber. Taylor and Liz. In both pairs the older one thinks they must carry more than they really can, and the younger one is braver than anyone expects. They squabble and tease and look out for each other. There is a lot of love under the snark. You feel how a family can be cracked and still hold.
Bianca Belle is terrific as Amber. She does not play the role as a martyr or a cartoon loner. She lets us see a kid who uses anger like armor and imagination like a rope that could pull her out of the pit if she would only let someone grab the other end. When it becomes clear that the hooded creature is a distorted version of herself, born from the version in her sketchbook that leaned all the way into the dark, it hits hard. You remember how it felt to look in the mirror at that age and see all the worst parts first. Jack is steady beside her. He tells her in his own words that sketches are not destiny, that what you make does not fully define what you are. He is not a therapist. He is her brother. It is enough.
There is a simple line from Taylor that I have been carrying around since the credits rolled. He tells his daughter that life asks us to carry joy alongside sorrow, because if we let go of joy the other side gets heavier and heavier until it wins. He does not lecture. He just says it like someone who learned it the hard way and does not want his kids to learn it the same way if they can help it. That is the secret heart of the movie. The monsters are not there to be defeated once and for all. They are there to be understood, and sometimes to be disarmed with a towel and a sink. Water matters. So do words.
The writing is sharp without being showy. Jokes land because the kids talk like children, not tiny adults. There is silly nonsense and precise wordplay and yes, a little toilet humor that will make an entire row of fourth graders lose their minds while the parents try not to smile too much. The editing knows when to breathe and when to sprint. Those quick cut gags give way to quiet scenes where the camera sits still and lets a look tell the story. It is confident work from a filmmaker who believes families can handle the truth if you wrap it in honesty and wonder.
One of the many things I appreciated is how the film shows grief in motion. It does not present mourning as a single note. It shows the ways sorrow plants itself in different parts of the body. In shoulders that will not relax. In rooms whose walls feel too tight. In strange ideas that feel logical at three in the morning and dangerous at three in the afternoon. For Taylor it is the urge to clean it all away, to box the memories so neatly that nothing can spill out anymore. For Jack it is the mission to fix everything, as if fixing things could stop time. For Amber it is art, the kind that spills and stains and takes shape as something you can face without feeling like you will drown.
There is also a kind of clarity in how the movie treats danger. The creatures can be frightening. But they are never cruel for the sake of shock. Even when the hooded figure draws a fresh wave of chaos it feels like a cry for help, not a celebration of ruin. The town does not become a battlefield. It becomes a playground that has forgotten its own rules. The stakes are real enough to make you squeeze the arm of the person beside you, but not so overwhelming that younger viewers will shut down. That is a tricky balance and the movie holds it well.
If you grew up with movies where an attic or a game or a gizmo sent regular families into a storm of adventure, this will scratch that itch. It even tips its cap to that era without getting stuck in a museum case. The past is present, but the heartbeat is new. The magic pond is not a gimmick. It is a mirror, a wish, a danger, and a teacher. It fixes some things and breaks others. It reflects what you drop into it, sometimes literally.
I keep thinking about the way the creatures look right before they dissolve in water. There is a sadness to it. Color runs. Edges soften. You can almost hear the paper sigh. It is not cruel. It is not a victory march. It is a reminder that the stuff we create to hold our feelings is still made of fragile materials. That does not make it less powerful. It makes it human. That image stayed with me long after the funny scenes faded. That and the chalk dust footprints. Little clouds that drift and then disappear, proof that something was there and then it was not. Like a parent who taught you how to tie your shoes and then one day is a story you tell instead of a hand you hold.
Tony Hale brings an easy sadness to Taylor, but also an optimism that is not naive. He does not play him as a fool who needs to learn a lesson. He plays him as a dad who is learning in public because he has to. D Arcy Carden brings spark and a steady gaze as Liz, the aunt who will chase a monster with you and then, when it is safe, sit you down and ask the tough question you avoided all day. The cast of kids is lively without turning into a pack of quip machines. They lean on one another. They take turns being brave. They mess up. They try again.
I think the biggest compliment I can give is that Sketch respects everyone in the audience. The little ones who might be meeting grief on screen for the first time will find a path into the story that does not treat them like porcelain. The teens who pretend they are above this kind of thing will see themselves in Jack more than they expect and probably hate that it works on them. The parents and the grown kids with old scars will feel the movie reaching for them too. It never lectures. It invites. Come sit with this for a while. Bring your memories. Bring your pain and your jokes and your patience. We will figure it out together.
Art can change how you feel from the inside out. That sentence sounds big, but it turns out to be true in small ways. I walked into this film with a set of expectations and a few raw nerves. I walked out a little lighter. Not fixed, because that is not how any of this works, but lighter. If you have ever used drawing or music or scribbled words on a page to drag something heavy out of your chest so you could breathe better for an afternoon, you already know the kind of magic this movie celebrates. It is not the kind of magic that turns pumpkins into carriages. It is the kind that lets you carry your sorrow and your joy in the same backpack and make it all the way home.
There is one more thing worth saying. Sometimes movies about loss get stuck in sadness, as if being honest about pain means refusing to be silly. Sketch understands that laughter is not an enemy of grief. It is a partner. Kids will laugh hard at the eyeders and their klepto adventures, and at the ridiculousness of a giant blue creature named Dave who looks like he was built out of ideas from a classroom at recess. Adults will laugh at a well timed cut or a character who says exactly the wrong thing in the right moment. The humor does not cheapen the story. It lifts it. It makes space for relief, which is how people survive.
I want to be careful not to oversell. No single movie can heal every hurt, and this one does not try to. It offers a hand. It shows a family working through a mess together and reminds us that hiding the pictures does not erase the person in them. It reminds us that older brothers need help too. It gives a little sister a way to face her darker reflection and choose differently. It leaves chalk on our shoes and glitter on our sleeves. I am still finding a speck of it on my arm today and smiling at the thought.
When the lights came up I thought about calling my brother. I thought about the shoebox in my closet that has my own old drawings in it, wild animals with too many teeth and cities that do not obey any kind of math. I thought about my dad. The ache does not go away just because a movie is kind to you. But sometimes you get a sentence or an image that you can lean on later, on the days when the world feels too loud. This one gave me a few.
Sketch is not only an adventure story. It is a letter to anyone who has lost something and wondered if it was still allowed to laugh. It says yes. It says take your time. It says let the art carry some of the weight. And when the dark tries to convince you that it is the only voice worth listening to, draw something bright, say the name of someone you love, and keep moving. Because the light has a place in you too, even when it does not feel like it, and it deserves to be carried forward.
