Wendell & Wild

I love Henry Selick's work in Stop Motion, Coraline is even one of my all time favorite films, however this new effort has unfortunately left me a little cold.

On the technical side it is certainly something great but the script is really simple with an unbalanced pace.

The ending comes all of a sudden and the viewer is not given time to empathize with what's going on.

The protagonists are nice even if some have a design that didn't drive me crazy. However, the film is not a bad film but thinking about past works it does not even reach those levels a bit.

Such a shame as I was very confident for Wendell & Wild.

From the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas & Coraline, Wendell & Wild is yet another stop-motion animation offering that brims with originality, creativity & imagination and packs a thematically-rich premise overflowing with ideas but the film as a whole still required more fine-tuning with the script, for the messy structure & muddled storytelling only brings the ride down.

Co-written by Jordan Peele & directed by Henry Selick, the story addresses guilt, trauma, loss, death, resurrection & even prison-industrial complex through its 13-year old protagonist but it fails to properly juggle the various subplots that are unfolding all at once and lacks a firm grip necessary to keep the drama riveting. It tries to tackle too many things & overstuffs the plot in the process.

The stop-motion craftsmanship on display remains top-notch from the get-go and the world it renders on screen has the director's macabre feel to it. Also uplifting the animation wizardry is the excellent use of camera, colour & lighting. Editing however is a mixed bag, for the narrative flow is a bit inconsistent and never truly gathers momentum. Voice acting is fine but the drama isn't compelling enough.

Overall, Wendell & Wild begins on a promising note and is admirable for its ambitious attempt but it needed a more tightly-knitted plot, polished script & better balance between its multiple plot lines to deliver the desired goods. The hand-crafted magic is commendable no doubt but it's the convoluted writing that hinders the film from realising its full potential. In short, Selick's latest is no match to his finest efforts.

Very little charm, not scary or creepy, and lacking any heart. This was wholly disappointing. I had trouble connecting with any of the characters, although I tried my best to! Kat, the movie's protagonist and an orphan, should've been SO much more sympathetic than she was. Even the titular characters Wendall & Wild were pretty one-dimensional.

The story lines also felt very jarring and disjointed. The only thing keeping me engaged was the stop motion and the occasional laugh, but even that wasn't enough to make me care. There's something seriously wrong with this movie. It should've been amazing, but ultimately, there's no magic to be had here.

As a fan of stop-motion animation as well as Keegan Michael-Keys and Jordan Peeles electric chemistry I was greatly anticipating this film when it was announced.

However I was overhyped for its release. The only aspect that is truly outstanding about this movie is stop motion animation.

The story is chaotic and introduces lore without a hint of context. The finale? Condensed. The solutions? Convenient. And for a movie called "Wendell & Wild" the title characters do not get as much screen time as you might imagine. Which is a shame because Key and Peeles voice delivery is stellar.

As a movie? It's middle of the road. As a stop motion movie? It's kinda bad.

Henry Sellick's first stop-motion animated film since 2009's beloved Coraline, Wendell & Wild melds beautiful artistry and a very funny script co-written by Jordan Peele.

The plot follows Kat, a young orphan shipped off to a private Catholic school for troubled girls, struggling with guilt over her perceived responsibility for her parents' tragic deaths. She also happens to be a Hellmaiden, able to summon the roguish demon brothers Wendell & Wild (played hilariously and to pitch perfection by comedy duo Key & Peele). They arrive in the land of the living to try and set up their lifelong dream project of running their own demonic funfair. Much chaos ensues.

I went in a bit blind on the story and wasn't sure what to expect, but Wendell & Wild might be the best stop motion film made since Coraline, or possibly just barely edging past it. Kat is a terrific protagonist, bucking trends and delivering more personality than all of LAIKA animation's somewhat milquetoast leads put together. There's a lot of artistic inventiveness on display, and the script is (for the most part) incredibly strong.

The film has only a couple downsides, which were a bit baffling considering the quality of the rest. Some of the scenes were a bit muddled, with events only making sense long after the fact (a particular sequence with an octopus and a glowing drawer left me scratching my head). The final act, while lots of fun, also feels like it's hastily wrapping up as much as it can in too short a time, with the credits rolling only moments after a bombastic finale - when it really, really could have used a couple more minutes to wind down with a nice epilogue.

This is a film that giddily enjoys keeping way more plates in the air than most films can get away with, and it results in a somewhat messy structure that makes it hard to tell who the main antagonist even is at any given moment, which seems to shift around wildly from scene to scene, from a gigantic Satan-like figure, to a pair of corrupt businessmen, to the titular brothers themselves, to a personal struggle against inner demons - before finally picking a clear lane in the last act. You just never know what direction the story is going to zig and zag to next, which is ultimately more of a strength than a weakness. Wendell & Wild is just as much a supernatural mystery film as it is an adventure/comedy, so viewers should be prepared to do a bit of sleuthing and not have anything spoon-fed.

This is not exactly a film for young kids, sporting heavy themes and a few dark moments, but it isn't that much scarier than Laika films like ParaNorman or Kubo and the Two Strings, only barely earning its PG-13 rating. Any kid that can handle The Nightmare Before Christmas (also directed by Sellick) should be OK with this.

Even with a few nitpicks holding it back, I give this film an easy 8/10. If you're an animation fan, you owe it to yourself to check this out... it's one of the most delightful and creative films in the entire stop-motion medium.