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.

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.

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.

I usually love Henry Selick's work. In fact the Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline are two of my favourite movies. But this just didn't hit the mark.

There was far too much going on, and many of the additional story points feel unnecessary, which ultimately ends up taking away from the quality of a film that could've been great, but really wasn't.

This film would've been so much better if the story was simplified and streamlined a bit.

Pretty disappointing overall.

The animation style was nice though, although not my favourite of his work, and it was nice to have diversity in the characters.