The Sleepover2020

It’s just enough entertainment to provide fodder for one diverting sleepover, but it’ll be forgotten as soon as the morning dawns.

The trailer for this had me thinking this was gonna be yet another brainless, Nickelodeon-type kid's "comedy", so when my daughter asked to watch, I only said yes begrudgingly. Turns out the trailer misrepresented the quality of the humor and acting in this. I was pleasantly surprised that this was genuinely funny -- not tears-in-your-eyes funny, but still elicited a good number of laughs. The cast is really strong; the dad was much funnier than what you see in the trailer. Early on, there's a scene aimed at parents where he's waiting in his car singing "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" by Paula Cole that had me LOLing. Despite a good number of jokes that went over the kids' heads, I wouldn't opt to view this on my own, but if you're gonna watch something with kids (probably age 10+), you can feel better about this option than much of the Nick/Disney pap with similar concepts but far fewer laughs and far worse acting.

Sleepover is cheerful enough that it passes the time, even as that time passes ever-so-slowly as it stumbles for clues, through a Boston sight gag or two and into the “big finish” that’s more a series of minor busts. Leave this one to the tween-and-unders.