Do Not Sleep on 'Dream Productions'

         On December 11, 2024, Disney+ premiered 'Dream Productions', which quickly earned a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing. In the series, "Riley's growing up and her Core Emotions are on the job helping her navigate, but now Paula faces a nightmare of her own; her signature combination of dreams featuring Rainbow Unicorn and copious amounts of glitter just isn't working anymore." The ensemble cast includes Paula Pell, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale, Richard Ayoade, and Kensington Tallman. But what did the critics say?

        Nick Schager of The Daily Beast says, "A clever and compassionate look at another corner of its protagonist’s mind—as well as a playful critique of the filmmaking process." Adding, "It’s nice that Poehler, Black, Smith and Lapira participate in Dream Productions, although Joy and company’s roles in this adventure are peripheral. That’s ultimately no huge loss, as Pell and Ayoade’s winning vocal performances are lively and their characters’ saga is fleet and funny, wasting little time on superfluous asides or running bits into the ground."

       Grant Hermanns of Screen Rant praises the series, stating, "Pixar's Dream Productions is a very inventive twist on the Inside Out formula, though it does somewhat suffer from feeling a bit rushed for a TV show." Concluding, "Ultimately, one of the few things the show does have working against it is the pacing of its story, which feels rushed in its latter half. Not counting credits, Dream Productions hardly clocks in at a 100-minute runtime, about the same length as both Inside Out movies. While a TV show may not need to have a 20-plus-episode run, a lengthier runtime would've benefited the full arc of its story, which the Disney+ spinoff really needed, as Paula and Xeni's storylines race to their finish lines."

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       Tara Bennett of AV Club was less impressed, stating, "Let it be known that if a third Inside Out feature gets made and it’s revealed that franchise heroine Riley Andersen’s (Kensington Tallman) anxiety has gotten worse, pointing the blame at her messed-up dream world is going to be expected, if not required. In fact, Dream Productions might be the first Disney-produced title to establish as canon that Hollywood studio culture is an ouroboros of dysfunction that originates from a toxic mini studio existing in all of our heads.  Pixar’s Dream Productions is a bridging mockumentary miniseries set between the events of Inside Out and Inside Out 2. Developed alongside the recent sequel, this series benefits from the animators getting full access to these updated characters and environments to make a really attractive streaming series that doesn’t look like it was made on the cheap. Unfolding like a side mission in the overall story of Riley’s young life, Dream Productions gives audiences a little more time with her as she’s growing up and trying to figure it all out. However, as a concept, its overall thesis that our dreams are produced by a brain-based “studio” that’s just as capricious and soul-crushingly focused on results as the real Hollywood is too meta for most kids to understand. Worse, it goes too far afield from the franchise’s mandate that Riley’s Emotions are always her biggest cheerleaders." Concluding, "That said, there are a couple of really well-executed musical numbers that elicit the exhilaration of a truly memorable dream. Also, the show’s construct of how a dream translates into Riley’s awareness—the camera is Riley—gets points for originality. The more comedic dreams (there’s an ’80s-inspired, David-Lynch-meets-The-Cure one, as well as a crush-focused sequence that unfolds like a Canadian rom-com) land nicely too. Character-wise, Ayoade’s signature style of line reading mixed with Xeni’s design and eccentric look make him a standout amongst a rather tepid ensemble that never reaches the success of the Core Emotions’ chemistry.  On the whole, Dream Productions is a fun idea that gets a bit derailed by its Hollywood setting and mockumentary format. And the meta playground of a studio backlot devolves too much into the negative with personal politicking and self-serving career ambitions. The Riley of it all is supposed to be the whole point of this wing of her subconscious. But that often gets subsumed when the series veers into a tame version of Robert Altman’s The Player."