Sketch

This was a great film to see with the kids. They enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. A fun concept with some fun moments.

Sketch (2025) – Angel Studios’ Monster Manual for Mourning
• Studio baggage – Let’s not sugarcoat it: seeing Angel Studios flash across the screen triggers a reflexive cringe in many of us. This is the same outfit responsible for pious propaganda masquerading as cinema, delivering their “values” like Sunday School with a megaphone. So when Sketch opened with the usual sentiment-heavy tone—grieving children, somber narration, and the promise of moral revelation—it was tempting to flee the theater like it was an exorcism in progress.
• Tone shift: grief meets Goosebumps – And yet…something happened. Sketch took a hard left turn from mawkish into mischievous. The premise—children’s grief-made-manifest through drawings that spring to life—starts as emotional therapy and ends up veering into spooky fun. These aren’t just monsters under the bed; they’re monsters from within the bed, drawn with crayons and animated with enough charm to keep even a seasoned skeptic engaged.
• Narrative arc – At its core, this is a grief story wrapped in a children’s adventure. The climax builds to a father-son catharsis we’ve been emotionally baited for since act one, delivered in the genre’s familiar whisper-shout of absolution. Think Robin Williams’ “It’s not your fault” (Good Will Hunting, for those keeping score) or the unspoken ache at the end of Call Me By Your Name. Here it’s clean, expected, but earnestly handled.
• Gimmicks and apps – Because it’s still Angel Studios, there is a QR code moment. Kids are encouraged to scan it, download the app, and animate their own monsters at home—part gamified grief toolkit, part marketing ploy. It walks the line between well-meaning and opportunistic, but the tech tie-in at least stays on theme with the film’s idea: express your pain, don’t suppress it.
• Moral delivery – Yes, the moral is still there—grief is okay, and art can help—but it’s delivered with less sermonizing than usual. If Angel Studios is evolving into the 2020s version of The Value Tales (those Time-Life kids’ books that taught honesty, courage, and empathy through whimsical biography), this is one of their less sanctimonious chapters.

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Final verdict: 3 out of 5 stars
Sketch won’t change cinema, and it won’t make Angel Studios palatable to everyone. But for 90 minutes, it sets aside the fire and brimstone to tell a gentle, quirky fable about how children process loss. It’s no Pixar—but it’s not Sound of Freedom either. Small mercies.

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Truly captures the ever elusive Amblin style and feel that so many movies and show constantly fumble. The script is sharp, funny and all of the cast delivers. It’s a wonder that so many movies have terrible performances from kids as this movie makes it seem effortless. I honestly can’t praise this movie enough.