{"id":104601,"date":"2022-10-22T09:13:06","date_gmt":"2022-10-22T09:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/a-review-of-wendell-wild\/"},"modified":"2022-10-22T09:13:06","modified_gmt":"2022-10-22T09:13:06","slug":"a-review-of-wendell-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/a-review-of-wendell-wild\/","title":{"rendered":"A Review Of Wendell & Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(from left) Wendell (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (voiced by Jordan Peele) in Wendell & Wild<\/em>.<\/figcaption>
photo: Netflix<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wendell & Wild<\/em><\/span>, the promising-on-paper collaboration between stop-motion legend Henry Selick and nouveau-horror maestro Jordan Peele, is about two demons who hatch a plan to open a theme park. It’s also about an orphaned teenage girl with survivor’s guilt. It’s also about an evil corporation scheming to build a for-profit prison. Wendell & Wild<\/em> is about a lot of things. Too many things, actually. But it’s so packed with gloriously demented visuals and bold thematic swings that try, with varying degrees of success, to lift the movie out of the realm of pure fantasy, that we’re not entirely bothered by the convoluted story. It’s a bit disappointing that these two visionary filmmakers couldn’t combine their formidable talents to create a more smoothly cohesive work. Nevertheless, it’s just too damn gorgeous to dismiss and the inclusionary characters modernize the animated antics in ways that will resonate with young adult audiences.<\/p>\n

It’s a tip off to the film’s unruly nature that its title is Wendell & Wild<\/em> yet neither of them is our hero. That would be 13-year-old Kat (voiced by Lyric Ross), a sullen and angry girl who blames herself for the death of her parents in a car accident five years earlier. She’s since become a behavioral challenge, which necessitates a return to her once thriving, now crumbling hometown of Rust Bank to enter a program for at-risk teens at the Rust Bank Catholic School for Girls. Kat is an outcast for reasons that go far beyond what most young leads experience in mainstream, youth-targeted animated mouse. It allows Peele, who co-wrote the film with Selick, to put his sociopolitical stamp on another director’s material, and Selick to add representation to his traditional portrait of the plucky, troubled kid.<\/p>\n