INDIGARA

Kid and loyal robot dog visit a confusing alternate dimension. When Jet’s spoiled sister lands a movie role, their parents sweep the family off to Ollywood to be pampered in futuristic hotels. Sullen Jet and robot dog Otis explore Ollywood’s underground subway, which features stores and roads as well as trains; people disappear there but nobody knows why. Jet and Otis narrowly escape a kidnapping attempt and are swirled off to Indigara, a world made up of “four [movie] pilots” that “have lain in Ollywood’s archives and fermented like compost. They have come to life. And interbred.” The people there are supposedly enacting an overly dramatic prewritten script; implausible events (like Jet breathing underwater) are explained away as special effects and “direction[s] in the script.” Otis calls Indigara “the very spirit of all Ollywood. The great Invented Dream,” but the physics between Indigara and reality—not to mention any deeper meaning or message—are muddled and unconvincing. Despite intermittently clever and funny narration, this sci-fi/fantasy hybrid is thinly conceived and awkwardly executed. (Fantasy. 10-12)