Wendell & Wild

The idea of Key&Peele as stop-motion characters was enough to draw me in, the problem with the movie is they're not the main characters even though the title says Wendell & Wild, the main character is the school girl Kat, and because her life's trauma left her cold, she hard to like, the animation has high production value, it looks good, but the story is about too many different things, and the title characters fade into the background, Kat is supposed to be some kind of hell something lol, and her mentor played by Angela Bassett has the same powers but it's not fleshed out enough to understand what the purpose of those powers are, overall a cute Halloween movie for a family to watch, parents turn off your brain and let the kids enjoy the animation.

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.

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.

Henry Selick's welcome return to direction is expectedly visually splendorous. Though a lot more rudimentary in it's appearance than Coraline, Wendell & Wild is brimming with life in the design of every one of its memorable characters and sets.

The unique style and quirky designs add a great deal of vibrancy to the many, many creative ideas present in the story. It makes for a gleefully bizarre, oddly captivating experience. I can see this becoming a cult classic like some of Selick's other stop-motion animated films.

I thought the characters all had more than sufficient unique personality to keep the film effortlessly watchable and engaging.

But there is WAY too much going on here. And I'm starting to see this as a trend in screenplays involving Jordan Peele, as Nope had the same problem earlier this year.

Wendell and Wild as characters are actually barely in this movie, and they are woefully underdeveloped, given the bare minimum of motivations and rushed, shallow character growth. And it's because the writers felt the need to make room for a plethora of other characters and story beats that are never given their time to become impactful.

Kat has an "overcoming trauma" arc that is simplistically glossed over in one scene, and she has magical powers that are introduced with almost no build-up.

Some generically-written friends of Kat's are given even less development and some scenes try to highlight them only to have little to no impact on the story.

I could go on, but I'll lastly mention that there are way too many antagonist characters, and because there's no time to focus on them, they're disappointingly simplistic and cartoonish, and it results in the story's themes being delivered in such an on-the-nose manner that the film's conclusion is unfortunately disappointing.