Movie Details
Movie: Wendell & Wild (2022)
Director: Henry Selick
Cast: Lyric Ross, Keegan-Michael Key, and Jordan Peele Movie Type: Horror/Fantasy
Release date: 21 October 2022
IMDB Rating: 6.4/10
Language: English in Canada and French in Canada. It is also available in Spanish and Traditional Chinese
Duration: 1h 45m
Trailer
Synopsis
Henry Sellick is one of the creators whose fans love him and makes them extremely happy with every film. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many of those pictures, in this case animated ones, in the last 30 years. At the same time, almost any time a well-known director ventured into stop-motion, it became a cult. Many of us would like to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas again in a few weeks, and Coraline is also quite popular with viewers. I liked Sellick’s animated style with a touch of black humor and a properly dark atmosphere, and I missed his distinctive creative hand a lot. Therefore, I had rather high expectations for the new Netflix series Wendell & Wild, on which he collaborated as a scriptwriter and producer with sought-after director Jordan Peele. I am all the more sorry that this time the classic Sellick motifs could not click into each other properly.
The story, which is based on the director’s unpublished book, is his handwriting. So we follow the fate of poor teenager Kat, whose parents died years ago and she is still guilty of their death. She has therefore become a cynical rebel, with whom she does not know how to cope in orphanages, so she is transferred to a Catholic school in her hometown. But here, of course, old wounds open up even more, and Kat wants nothing more than to be reunited with her parents. In it, he begins to communicate with the two unconventional title demons, whose dream is to open their amusement park in the world of the living. Therefore, they make a deal with Kat, after which an avalanche of crazy events starts.
At first glance, it is a mix of How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Coraline, where bizarre characters and an almost grotesque and burned-out world are combined with the personal suffering of the main teenage heroine and her relationship with her parents. Sellick also this time fills the story with many nice screenplay and visual ideas, the secondary characters are properly jerky, the humor is again typically black or even morbid, and certain passages will probably be enjoyed more by adults than their children. Sellick then manages to maintain his typical atmosphere, pace, and dark style, and the stop-motion animation is once again properly distinctive. Although I admit that her style and processing of some characters probably won’t suit everyone. But if it catches your eye right from the start, it will be one of the main reasons why you will keep your attention on Sellick’s new story.
The main weakness lies in the scenario, which is simply one big chaos. Sellick and Peele seem to not know what they want to talk about, even through the main line. The plot is thus filled with too many characters, practically each of which has its plot, and the authors devote too much space to many of them. The film jumps tiresomely from one character to another and everyone trips each other up, while not all the heroes or plots interest you. The scatteredness of the story has the effect that the protagonist is practically coughing for a long time.
Henry Sellick thus once again brought to fans his typical proprieties, solid craftsmanship, and original stop-motion animation. However, he turned his trump cards into story magic, which can entertain in certain passages with the author’s ideas and his typical dark humor, but there are too many characters and storylines. The popular creator can partially please his fans, but even the most die-hard fans have to admit that Wendell & Wild watch SHow the Grinch Stole Christmas and Coraline from afar.
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