Wendell & Wild

 2/4

Starring (voices): Lyric Ross, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Angela Bassett, James Hong, Sam Zelaya, Ving Rhames, Igal Naor, David Harewood, Maxine Peake, Tantoo Cardinal

Rated PG-13 for Some Thematic Material, Violence, Substance Use and Brief Strong Language

Few types of movies are more painful to sit through than ones that take no risks and are as bland as tofu.  "Thor: Love and Thunder" is a terrific example.  That movie had no plot, no characters, or anything worth caring about.  It played things so safe that there was nothing to capture any sort of interest.  As a result, it's easily the worst movie in the MCU and a shoo-in for a spot on my Bottom 10 list.

There's a flip side to that.  A movie that has too much plot and too many characters battling for our interest won't work either.  Such is the case with "Wendell & Wild," the new film from stop-motion animation guru Henry Selick.  That the film is based on a novel (co-written by Selick himself) doesn't surprise me.  This is what happens when a filmmaker tries to incorporate everything from the source material.  There's so much going on that neither the characters nor the story have time to gain any traction.

Kat (Ross) is one unhappy girl.  Having blamed herself for the death of her parents in a car crash, she has retreaded inward.  She has a newfound habit of acting out, and that has landed her at a Catholic boarding school, in the ailing town where she grew up.  Kat rebuffs any and all attempts of friendship from her fellow students or Sister Helley (Bassett), the kind nun who senses her pain.  "Bad things happen to the people I'm close to," she snarls.  One night, she has a nightmare about the crash, and is visited by her personal demons, Wendell (Key) and Wild (Peele).  They make her a deal: if she helps them get to the land of the living, they will resurrect her parents.  But as she finds out, such transactions have a price.

What "Wendell & Wild" needs is discipline.  As a writer, I can only imagine how attached Selick is to his characters, but movies are not books.  They have space to breathe that's not possible in film that runs for two hours or less.  Hard as it may be, subplots and minor characters have to be cut to make the narrative strong.  That doesn't happen here.  Selick includes everything.  I marveled at his invention and audacity, but the end result is that I didn't care about anyone in it.  The strong human interest necessary for this story to work isn't there.  Selick spends so much time juggling it all that the characters simply become chess pieces for him to move around as he sees fit.

The voice talent is solid, if unspectacular.  Lyric Ross is a good, no nonsense heroine in the tradition of all animated heroines.  She's smart, tough and won't be weighed down by the darkness in her heart.  Angela Bassett is flat as Sister Helley.  The strength that characterizes most of her on-screen personas is missing.  James Hong has a few nice moments as a ghoulish priest with questionable morals.  The weak links are Key & Peele.  I've never found them particularly funny and that hasn't changed.  They're meant to be bumbling comic relief in the vein of Pain and Panic from Disney's "Hercules," but they're flat and uncharismatic.  Wendell and Wild are boring.

So the film doesn't work.  But I'll be the first to point out its strengths.  The stop motion animation that is a hallmark of Selick's work is marvelous and a joy to watch.  It makes me wish that more movies took this route.  I also liked the fact that the film has an edge.  Selick has long had an affinity for the macabre, and that hasn't changed here.  He's not afraid of frightening his audience with spooky images and special effects.  This isn't a movie for young kids, nor is it intended to be.  Considering the story being told, that's an asset.

I love animation in general, so I have a soft spot for movies like this.  But there's no getting around the fact that it is a disappointment.  It looks great and has a lot of energy, but it is so busy that the emotion that comes from great storytelling gets lost.  There's good stuff here, but it needed someone to make the hard choices about what gets cut and what gets expanded.

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