Wendell & Wild - Halloween Classic! (Could use a tune-up....
a year ago
Ho-ho-ho, Merry Halloween guys!
...
Yeah, I got this review out late, don't judge me.
But yeah, Wendell & Wild, a stop-motion movie, animated by Henry Selick himself and with writing credit of Jordan Peele (Get Out), comes a movie that has a chance to be a beloved Halloween classic! I got really excited myself when I saw the trailer and felt really interested in seeing it myself! And you know what, I will admit that I got interested due to more typical, self-explanatory reasons. And man, I did enjoy it!
...Albeit I do have some issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJp.....hannel=Netflix
Synopsis: Kat is your typical, happy little girl who accidentally killed her parents in a freak accident. After being sent from one orphanage to the next and then to juvie, she is then sent back to her hometown, where she has to attend a Catholic girls-only school in order to make up for her misbehavior. The baddest of them in the block, she is not interested in getting to know anyone, until she ended up stumbling into the eponymous duo, Wendell and Wild, a pair of demon brothers who need her help to get into the real world to realize their dream. Kat is skeptical, but after negotiating with them a chance to get her parents back to life, she makes the deal with the two devils, sending her hometown in a nightmarish experience they won't forget.
A lot of things about this movie is honestly pretty good, save for one point, so let's list them.
Animation: OH GOD THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL. Henry Selick returns once again to do some stop motion animation, despite only doing Nightmare before Christmas and Coraline, and yet, once again, pulled it off with brilliance! Great puppet design, great set designs, fun colors, great effects, the stop motions that felt indistinguishable from Computer Animation, it is all so good! Really worth watching on that alone.
Characters: All of them are pretty likeable! And honestly, Wendell and Wild, voiced by the famous Kay and Peele duo, just stole the show. Their scenes are fun, and their character are memorable. The Sister and the janitor duo are also good, Raul is a cool friend who happens to be trans (thus is why there is a boy in an all girl school) and Siobhan is good too...That said, I will admit, Kat herself happened to be the weakest character. She is not awful, mind you, but like...there are elements about her that feel unsatisfying and incomplete.
Plot: And here comes the gist of my problems. Now, first of all, I had no problem with the plot itself. I think it went well, I followed it without problem, there were good set ups and payoffs, and even the whole anti private prisons message is generally well done! But man...the structure and the pacing!
The pacing feels so rushed, I don't think they ever let the scenes enough time to breathe. I remember them based on visuals alone...but not on the actual feeling of it! Sure, I probably will get some on repeat watches, but that doesn't feel right though. The structure also is a mess, in that too many things happen at once, and yet not all of them are given good feel or attention. There were several things that needed fleshing out, payoffs that never appeared. It could really used a whole new spin off comic book series or something! Like, to make my point clear, remember the accident that happened at the beginning? Never followed up! No seriously, Kat literally just happened to have gotten a candy apple that happened to had the most aggressive pair of gummy worms inside of it, nothing thematic about that at all.
Seriously, the whole thing could have done the following:
- Trim the fat. There were several times that scenes or information got repeatedly given to the audience, without giving a variation or something new to it.
- Make Kat the POV character. Literally, everything that happens happened around her, and while she has connections to it all, everyone else does way more than she. To the point, I kid you not, when Raul gets into trouble, she only decides to go and save him, after being convinced to do that by someone else! She is rarely driving her own character! Seriously, don't just do the stereotypical bad girl vibe with her, give her own suggestion as to why her parents died, interest in occult, maybe more, because all she did was mope that her parents died, talk about all who she gets close to get hurt (Umm, all you showed us from before where your parents...who else got hurt close to you???), and then get sucked into bringing them back to life, and nothing else. Make here more interesting, and use other characters to make her get glimpses of what every else do (Raul for the school and Siobhan for the Private Prison thingie) while developing her relationship with them, all the while used the Sister and Demon Brother to signify her morality and choices. Seriously, she feels so incomplete!
- Should have focused on grief more. Oh sure, give us the protesting for whats right, the family bond, and what else, but you really dropped the ball on the set up of bringing parents back to life and not doing much. I mean, the movie DID do an excellent scene of her coming to terms with her grief...but it was all Told and not Shown beforehand, so the emotional catharsis was not there at all!
- Sorry, you should have made W&W the main villains. I mean, they are "villains", but like, man! The whole thing should have had more mystical elements to it, but the climax was such a let down, to the point that the mysticism just wasn't given the right amount of spotlight it should have. Make THEM responsible for those evil worms or something! You had that right there!
Overall: 7/10
Its a good movie, and I recommend it for a watch! But I don't think I'll revisit it consciously. If you liked it, great!
Oh, and happy Chrisis and what not.
...
Yeah, I got this review out late, don't judge me.
But yeah, Wendell & Wild, a stop-motion movie, animated by Henry Selick himself and with writing credit of Jordan Peele (Get Out), comes a movie that has a chance to be a beloved Halloween classic! I got really excited myself when I saw the trailer and felt really interested in seeing it myself! And you know what, I will admit that I got interested due to more typical, self-explanatory reasons. And man, I did enjoy it!
...Albeit I do have some issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJp.....hannel=Netflix
Synopsis: Kat is your typical, happy little girl who accidentally killed her parents in a freak accident. After being sent from one orphanage to the next and then to juvie, she is then sent back to her hometown, where she has to attend a Catholic girls-only school in order to make up for her misbehavior. The baddest of them in the block, she is not interested in getting to know anyone, until she ended up stumbling into the eponymous duo, Wendell and Wild, a pair of demon brothers who need her help to get into the real world to realize their dream. Kat is skeptical, but after negotiating with them a chance to get her parents back to life, she makes the deal with the two devils, sending her hometown in a nightmarish experience they won't forget.
A lot of things about this movie is honestly pretty good, save for one point, so let's list them.
Animation: OH GOD THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL. Henry Selick returns once again to do some stop motion animation, despite only doing Nightmare before Christmas and Coraline, and yet, once again, pulled it off with brilliance! Great puppet design, great set designs, fun colors, great effects, the stop motions that felt indistinguishable from Computer Animation, it is all so good! Really worth watching on that alone.
Characters: All of them are pretty likeable! And honestly, Wendell and Wild, voiced by the famous Kay and Peele duo, just stole the show. Their scenes are fun, and their character are memorable. The Sister and the janitor duo are also good, Raul is a cool friend who happens to be trans (thus is why there is a boy in an all girl school) and Siobhan is good too...That said, I will admit, Kat herself happened to be the weakest character. She is not awful, mind you, but like...there are elements about her that feel unsatisfying and incomplete.
Plot: And here comes the gist of my problems. Now, first of all, I had no problem with the plot itself. I think it went well, I followed it without problem, there were good set ups and payoffs, and even the whole anti private prisons message is generally well done! But man...the structure and the pacing!
The pacing feels so rushed, I don't think they ever let the scenes enough time to breathe. I remember them based on visuals alone...but not on the actual feeling of it! Sure, I probably will get some on repeat watches, but that doesn't feel right though. The structure also is a mess, in that too many things happen at once, and yet not all of them are given good feel or attention. There were several things that needed fleshing out, payoffs that never appeared. It could really used a whole new spin off comic book series or something! Like, to make my point clear, remember the accident that happened at the beginning? Never followed up! No seriously, Kat literally just happened to have gotten a candy apple that happened to had the most aggressive pair of gummy worms inside of it, nothing thematic about that at all.
Seriously, the whole thing could have done the following:
- Trim the fat. There were several times that scenes or information got repeatedly given to the audience, without giving a variation or something new to it.
- Make Kat the POV character. Literally, everything that happens happened around her, and while she has connections to it all, everyone else does way more than she. To the point, I kid you not, when Raul gets into trouble, she only decides to go and save him, after being convinced to do that by someone else! She is rarely driving her own character! Seriously, don't just do the stereotypical bad girl vibe with her, give her own suggestion as to why her parents died, interest in occult, maybe more, because all she did was mope that her parents died, talk about all who she gets close to get hurt (Umm, all you showed us from before where your parents...who else got hurt close to you???), and then get sucked into bringing them back to life, and nothing else. Make here more interesting, and use other characters to make her get glimpses of what every else do (Raul for the school and Siobhan for the Private Prison thingie) while developing her relationship with them, all the while used the Sister and Demon Brother to signify her morality and choices. Seriously, she feels so incomplete!
- Should have focused on grief more. Oh sure, give us the protesting for whats right, the family bond, and what else, but you really dropped the ball on the set up of bringing parents back to life and not doing much. I mean, the movie DID do an excellent scene of her coming to terms with her grief...but it was all Told and not Shown beforehand, so the emotional catharsis was not there at all!
- Sorry, you should have made W&W the main villains. I mean, they are "villains", but like, man! The whole thing should have had more mystical elements to it, but the climax was such a let down, to the point that the mysticism just wasn't given the right amount of spotlight it should have. Make THEM responsible for those evil worms or something! You had that right there!
Overall: 7/10
Its a good movie, and I recommend it for a watch! But I don't think I'll revisit it consciously. If you liked it, great!
Oh, and happy Chrisis and what not.