Movie Review: Invisible Sister

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Fun story, good characters, great effects

Cons: Predictable story, moments of acting

The Bottom Line:

Seeing another

While being invisible

Fun, predictable

You’ll See Enjoyment from this Movie

One of the advantages of watching Girl Meets World is seeing ads for more Disney Channel original movies I might be interested in.  Granted, I mainly decided to tune in to Invisible Sister because Girl Meets World star Rowan Blanchard was going to be in it, but it sounded like it could be fun.  Turned out, it was.

Cleo (Rowan Blanchard) is the younger sister in the family and everyone pretty much ignores her.  She’s gotten used to just skating by, living in the shadow of her much more popular older sister Molly (Paris Berelc).  Cleo even feels like her parents ignore her.

On Halloween Friday, Cleo’s science experiment goes haywire, and Cleo accidentally makes Molly invisible.  Since Molly has things she has to do at school, Cleo dresses up in Molly’s costume and takes her place, all the time hoping she can figure out a way to undo her experiment.  What might the sisters learn about each other along the way?

No, this movie isn’t incredibly original.  I could pretty much see most of the plot complications coming early on.  This is especially true if you’ve seen Freaky Friday.  And yet, I had a blast watching it because I was having fun.  I really did like Cleo and Molly and found it easy to root for them to succeed.  There were some fun moments and plenty of laughs along the way to the climax, and the quieter character moments worked just as well.

In fact, I was very impressed with the fact that Molly wasn’t a jerk.  I kind of expected her to be before I started watching the movie, but she was actually pretty nice.  I’d say that how both sisters started out was in part thanks to their own actions, something that they realized over the course of the movie, and an element of the film I really appreciated.

The film was filled with current Disney Channel stars.  I can’t tell you what shows they are all in, but I do recognize them from various previews.  The acting was a bit over the top at times, but for the most part it worked and never threw me out of the movie.  And yes, Rowan was toned down from her performance as Riley on Girl Meets World.  (Yes, I think she’s perfect as Riley, but this isn’t as frantic.)

The effects were very well done.  Since one of the characters is pretty much invisible for most of the film, there are lots of effects, and I bought all but one or two of them.  The one thing that tripped me up is that, while the characters can’t see Molly, sometimes we can, so we can see her reactions to things.  That took me a little while to get used to, but once I did, I didn’t mind it.

If you have pre-teens, they’ll definitely enjoy this movie.  And if you give Invisible Sister a chance, you just might find yourself enjoying it as well.  I certainly did.