{"id":108089,"date":"2022-10-25T23:44:48","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T23:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/review-wendell-wild-is-a-dark-and-cold-animated-ride\/"},"modified":"2022-10-25T23:44:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T23:44:48","slug":"review-wendell-wild-is-a-dark-and-cold-animated-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/review-wendell-wild-is-a-dark-and-cold-animated-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: ‘Wendell & Wild’ is a dark and cold animated ride"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just in time for Halloween comes a movie that isn’t afraid to lean into the darkness, one frame at a time.<\/p>\n

In the first five minutes of \u201cWendell & Wild,\u201d our teen heroine loses her parents in a car accident, her town is economically gutted and she ends up in the back of a prison bus, her legs shackled and her hands cuffed.<\/p>\n

This is cold stuff. Director Henry Selick’s return to stop-motion animation is icy, from the slushy potholes on the roads to the vapor clouds that emerge from characters’ mouths. His script with Jordan Peele is equally chilly, a place where alienation, backstabbing and plots abound.<\/p>\n

Selick, whose previous films include \u201cThe Nightmare Before Christmas,\u201d \u201cJames and the Giant Peach\u201d and \u201cCoraline,\u201d has attracted a starry lineup of actors to supply voices this time: Ving Rhames, James Hong, Angela Bassett, David Harewood and Peele, reunited with his old comedy partner Keegan-Michael Key.<\/p>\n

Peele and Key play the titular characters, a pair of mid-level, none-too-smart demon brothers who hope to escape drudgery in hell by escaping to the world of the living and opening a fun fair. Unfortunately, their bander is a little hemmed in, a little less hysterical than anticipated.<\/p>\n

They think they’ve found their way out of hell in the form of 13-year-old Kat Elliott (Lyric Ross), a goth-like rebellious orphan who has green hair, eyebrow piercings, knee-length platform boots and fingerless studded gloves . She carries a boombox and a doesn’t-play-with-others vibe. \u201cI don’t do friends,\u201d she says. \u201cBad things happen to people I’m close to.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a dark tale, with the action never far from the town’s cemetery and coffins seemingly always being cracked open. There is a stab at social criticism involving an ominous for-profit company that wants to build a prison so badly it raises the dead to get the city council votes, and a parochial school willing to make a deal with these devils to stay open.<\/p>\n

Throughout is Selick’s idiosyncratic vision. It takes a certain kind of ghoulish humor to bring a Catholic priest back from the dead with a hair-regrowth cream while our two demon brothers celebrate with high-fives as the soundtrack plays \u201cYou Sexy Thing\u201d by Hot Chocolate. In many ways, this film has the creepiness of \u201cThe Nightmare Before Christmas fused with the girl-power of \u201dCoraline\u201d but for less pay-off than either.<\/p>\n

The animation style includes the hyper-realism of backgrounds and thrilling details like a messy, bubbling pot of sauce or a rusted bulldozer to human characters who have seams on their faces and often long, skinny legs. A pair of nuns resemble strange fat birds and skeletons with worms in their eyes stumble along. The nifty character designs are credited to designer Pablo Lobato.<\/p>\n

Beneath it all is the story of a child’s love and guilt \u2014 and an education and judicial system letting her down \u2014 which propels her to bring her parents back from the dead, but that gets a little lost in the gross-out humor, Addams Family -level weirdness and shock-for-shock’s sake visual gags like a demonic teddy bear. For all the lovingly crafted spectacle, Selick’s agonizing, shot-by-shot film, is as overstuffed as that bear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWendell & Wild,\u201d a Netflix release, is rated PG-13 for some thematic material, violence, substance use and brief strong language. Running time: 106 minutes. Two stars out of four.<\/p>\n

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MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.<\/p>\n

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Online: https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/80231433<\/p>\n

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Mark Kennedy is at http:\/\/twitter.com\/KennedyTwits<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n