Sketch (2025)    Angel Studios/Fantasy-Comedy-Drama    RT: 92 minutes    Rated PG (scary action, some violence, thematic elements, language, rude humor)    Director: Seth Worley    Screenplay: Seth Worley    Music: Cody Fry    Cinematography: Megan Stacey    Release date: August 6, 2025 (US)    Cast: Tony Hale, D’Arcy Carden, Bianca Belle, Kue Lawrence, Kalon Cox, Jaxen Kenner, Genesis Rose Brown, Randa Newman, Allie McCulloch, Nadia Benavides, Dajanae Cole, Josh Inocalla.

Rating: ***

 My prayers have finally been answered by, of all entities, Angel Studios. I have been praying to the movie gods for years for a return to form for summer movies. There were many reasons my teenage self looked forward to summer vacation. One of them was, you guessed it, the movies. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than sitting in a dark theater watching great youth-oriented fantasy flicks like The NeverEnding Story (1984), Explorers (1985), Flight of the Navigator (1986) and The Monster Squad (1987). They were blessedly free of the cynicism and manufactured feel of today’s hot weather selections. They were a joy compared to the hollow, megabudget would-be blockbusters we get now.

 I suppose it makes sense that the deliverer of said salvation is an angel….. Angel Studios, that is. The studio responsible for films aimed at religious audiences (e.g. Sound of Freedom, Cabrini) has officially thrown its hat in the ring with Sketch, a fantasy-adventure about a brother and sister saving their town from monsters. The catch, the sister inadvertently created them by way of her drawings.

 10YO Amber (Belle, Sweet Magnolias) and her older brother Jack (Lawrence, Marshmallow) are having a hard time of it after their mother’s death. Their father Taylor (Hale, Arrested Development) prefers not to talk or even think about it. Consequently, the kids keep their grief bottled up. Jack follows his dad’s lead and internalizes it. Amber, always artistically inclined, throws herself into her art, drawing pictures of hideous monsters and violent scenarios. The school psychologist encourages it, saying that it’s better to draw her dark thoughts in a notebook rather than act on them.

 The family lives next to the woods. In these woods, there’s a magic pond. It can fix things like Jack’s phone and their mother’s broken serving plate. Jack decides to put his mother’s ashes in the water, He doesn’t get a chance. Amber follows him and tries to stop him only to drop her notebook into the pond. Not long after, their school bus is attacked by a big blue monster. Amber recognizes it from one of her pictures. Then all of her other creations, most of them made of chalk dust and glitter, show up. It’s on Amber and Jack, along with frenemy Bowman (Cox), to destroy the monsters and save their little town and loved ones.

 Writer-director Seth Worley, making his feature film debut, has fashioned a decent old school fantasy movie with Sketch. It’s not perfect. It’s uneven. It struggles with tone trying to blend fun action, silly comedy and serious drama about loss. It’s a bumpy ride at times, but it’s still kind of fun getting to the ultimate destination.

 Now let’s turn our attention to what’s good about Sketch. The first thing that struck me about it is how it doesn’t treat the serious subject matter with kid gloves. It’s not all at all condescending to its target audience. It deals openly with the grief felt by kids after the death of a parent. At one point, they wonder what the death of one parent makes them. For the record, the term is “maternal orphan” or in the shortened form invented by Amber “morphan”. It’s also not afraid to go big with the scares. The young heroes find themselves in dangerous, potentially fatal, situations more than once. Some of the creatures are truly frightening. The hooded figure, made of crayon wax, sitting next to the pond is like something out of a PG-13 horror. Sketch is most definitely NOT for small children.

 Obviously, the special effects in Sketch are computer-generated. They still look cool. They look exactly like something drawn by an imaginative child. We get a swarm of red one-eyed spiders and a cuddly cat with tentacles. We also get yellow butterflies that leave yellow dust on the windows. Then there’s the scary figure wearing a hoodie. It’s the same figure Amber drew thrusting a knife into Bowman, not so much a bully as an obnoxious boy who loves to torment Amber. He makes her angry and it’s these feelings that put Bowman in danger. Her drawings are an expression of her emotions which means they’ll go after whoever her anger was directed at when she drew them. It’s quite a clever idea actually.

 Belle and Lawrence take command of Sketch with their emotional openness and willingness to go there. They also show strength and pluck in their resolve to conquer their monsters. Cox is reminiscent of Chunk from The Goonies with his vociferousness and tendency to annoy others. He’s half the movie’s comic relief. The other is D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place) as the dad’s sister, a realtor trying to sell the family home only to have Taylor muck it up each time by bursting in while she’s showing it to potential buyers. She gets all the best lines. Hale, in a rare non-comic role, seems to have a hard time playing it straight. I didn’t completely buy him as the grief-stricken dad. He doesn’t do a bad job; he just doesn’t hit all the right emotional marks.

 While far from perfect, Sketch works on the level of a movie to be seen by youngsters on a hot summer day when it’s too hot to be outside. It’s enjoyable and it has a unique look to it. I’m especially glad it refrains from bringing religion into it with a shoehorned message about the power of faith. It simply tells a story that will engage the kids without resorting to Marvel-size action set-pieces. It’s not an assault on the senses, a fact for which we should all be thankful.