Right off the bat I want to say that the stop motion animation is simply gorgeous, and the characters move fluidly in each scene they are in. The creepy factor, the wild demon designs, dank atmosphere of the girl's school and town as well as the grim reality of corporatization all make this film stylish, and while it's super cliche, I would say it had good intentions, but fumbled halfway through.
The negatives outweigh the good and for starters, I'm getting sick and tired of Netflix putting more effort into funding projects that focus on style over substance and prioritizing messaging over a good story. Lately their original movies and shows all seem to have these vivid and magical worlds with amazing technical prowess and costume design, but then all of a sudden, the awful writing, flimsy story and bad characters rear their ugly heads and really sink the quality of their original projects down to the ground.
Wendell and Wild had potential to be Selick's next hit after Coraline and such, but even though his stop motion style and flair is present here, the jumbled and confusing narrative, flat or unlikable characters and the terrible writing choices ruin this movie for me which is sad because I wanted to like this movie a lot.
The story is all over the place, you have Kat wanting to resurrect her dead parents, Wendell and Wild wanting to build a theme park for the dead, the evil corporates wanting to build a private prison, a nun who is secretly some kind of demon hunter who wants to train Kat to use her powers, a murder mystery involving a burnt down brewery and dealing with trauma at a young age, it's all so harrowing and in your face.
The plot structure was disjointed in some areas and really showed in the latter half of the movie as well. The script needed better edits in order for it to make sense.
Kat is by far one of the worst protagonists I've ever seen in a children's movie; she's rude, inconsiderate, spiteful, aggressive, treats everyone and everything around her like roadkill and even when people try to be nice to her, she snaps back and returns their kindness with vitriol and scorn. I get that she's traumatized by her parent's deaths, has been treated like crap her entire life but that doesn't give her an excuse to be mean to people she's never met or to people who've never wronged her, she just found their cheerfulness annoying and that's one thing, but there's no need for her to be so repulsed by their quite frankly innocuous behavior.
I cannot relate to her whatsoever, she's a terribly written character, uses her trauma to justify her bad behavior and acts like she doesn't need help when someone asks her how she's doing. It'd be one thing if everyone around her was worse and treated her like dirt on the side of the road, but since they're not, if anything they're more hospitable to her than anything else, that just exacerbates her character's worst attributes even more.
Wendell and Wild were just the stereotypical comic relief duo who fumble around more than actually do much of anything other than mess up the balance of life and death. I didn't mind them as much.
Raul was the only character I liked and wished was the actual protagonist of this movie. Not only is he really good transgender representation done right, but he's a lot more likable than Kat ever will be, even when forced to join her, he tries to do right by her and helps her out with her plans, even helping her resurrect her dead parents despite the danger and goes out of his way to fight for good, that's someone I'd rather follow, and think is a hero in my opinion.
Kat's parents are plot devices and are in and out of the movie too fast for me to care about their relationship with their daughter and it shows. I don't remember their names that's how memorable they were.
I don't remember much else from the cast, most of them were pretty unremarkable and one note. Also, what the heck is a hell maiden? Who are they? Is there a group of them in hiding around the world? How do they get their powers? How long have they been around for? If they have these powers, how come they never used them to solve the brewery fire or murders? These powers are never explained properly, and they're not used effectively in this plot at all besides being plot convenience.
The villains are one note, corporate bad guys who want to privatize and create a large prison to get rich and somehow have all this backing despite paying people with monopoly money? To be honest, the villain's plans feel so disconnected from the plot of this movie that it feels like it was tacked on because we needed bad guys to defeat so that Kat can save the day or something. The message was poorly handled and hamfisted at every point in this movie, we get it, private prisons who treat inmates like dirt are bad and only care about money, how totally "original" this is sarcasm by the way lol.
Also, for a kid's film, it somehow manages to be both whimsical and supernatural but also dark and gritty and not in a good way. Coraline was able to have its cake and eat it too, telling a fun and interesting story for kids but handling the darker themes in a way that doesn't seem too off putting to a younger audience. True the movie was dark, but unlike Wendell and Wild, it knew when to create tension and give you scenes of levity to balance out the creepiness.
Finally, the ending is also dysfunctional and all over the place, the story had promised and started off interesting, but halfway through it fizzled out and relied on cheap tropes to get to the end faster.
The voice acting, stop motion animation, character and set design were all top tier amazing, but as per usual with Netflix originals, the story is unfocused and chaotic, the writing is confusing to follow even for a kids film, the magic isn't explained properly and finally the characters are either boring or detestable.
I hope Netflix greenlights better written projects because this one had so much potential to be good, but it disappointed me like so many other original Netflix works that it's just becoming a chore to watch these shows. I find myself criticizing these stories more than enjoying them, that's how depressing it's gotten.
The negatives outweigh the good and for starters, I'm getting sick and tired of Netflix putting more effort into funding projects that focus on style over substance and prioritizing messaging over a good story. Lately their original movies and shows all seem to have these vivid and magical worlds with amazing technical prowess and costume design, but then all of a sudden, the awful writing, flimsy story and bad characters rear their ugly heads and really sink the quality of their original projects down to the ground.
Wendell and Wild had potential to be Selick's next hit after Coraline and such, but even though his stop motion style and flair is present here, the jumbled and confusing narrative, flat or unlikable characters and the terrible writing choices ruin this movie for me which is sad because I wanted to like this movie a lot.
The story is all over the place, you have Kat wanting to resurrect her dead parents, Wendell and Wild wanting to build a theme park for the dead, the evil corporates wanting to build a private prison, a nun who is secretly some kind of demon hunter who wants to train Kat to use her powers, a murder mystery involving a burnt down brewery and dealing with trauma at a young age, it's all so harrowing and in your face.
The plot structure was disjointed in some areas and really showed in the latter half of the movie as well. The script needed better edits in order for it to make sense.
Kat is by far one of the worst protagonists I've ever seen in a children's movie; she's rude, inconsiderate, spiteful, aggressive, treats everyone and everything around her like roadkill and even when people try to be nice to her, she snaps back and returns their kindness with vitriol and scorn. I get that she's traumatized by her parent's deaths, has been treated like crap her entire life but that doesn't give her an excuse to be mean to people she's never met or to people who've never wronged her, she just found their cheerfulness annoying and that's one thing, but there's no need for her to be so repulsed by their quite frankly innocuous behavior.
I cannot relate to her whatsoever, she's a terribly written character, uses her trauma to justify her bad behavior and acts like she doesn't need help when someone asks her how she's doing. It'd be one thing if everyone around her was worse and treated her like dirt on the side of the road, but since they're not, if anything they're more hospitable to her than anything else, that just exacerbates her character's worst attributes even more.
Wendell and Wild were just the stereotypical comic relief duo who fumble around more than actually do much of anything other than mess up the balance of life and death. I didn't mind them as much.
Raul was the only character I liked and wished was the actual protagonist of this movie. Not only is he really good transgender representation done right, but he's a lot more likable than Kat ever will be, even when forced to join her, he tries to do right by her and helps her out with her plans, even helping her resurrect her dead parents despite the danger and goes out of his way to fight for good, that's someone I'd rather follow, and think is a hero in my opinion.
Kat's parents are plot devices and are in and out of the movie too fast for me to care about their relationship with their daughter and it shows. I don't remember their names that's how memorable they were.
I don't remember much else from the cast, most of them were pretty unremarkable and one note. Also, what the heck is a hell maiden? Who are they? Is there a group of them in hiding around the world? How do they get their powers? How long have they been around for? If they have these powers, how come they never used them to solve the brewery fire or murders? These powers are never explained properly, and they're not used effectively in this plot at all besides being plot convenience.
The villains are one note, corporate bad guys who want to privatize and create a large prison to get rich and somehow have all this backing despite paying people with monopoly money? To be honest, the villain's plans feel so disconnected from the plot of this movie that it feels like it was tacked on because we needed bad guys to defeat so that Kat can save the day or something. The message was poorly handled and hamfisted at every point in this movie, we get it, private prisons who treat inmates like dirt are bad and only care about money, how totally "original" this is sarcasm by the way lol.
Also, for a kid's film, it somehow manages to be both whimsical and supernatural but also dark and gritty and not in a good way. Coraline was able to have its cake and eat it too, telling a fun and interesting story for kids but handling the darker themes in a way that doesn't seem too off putting to a younger audience. True the movie was dark, but unlike Wendell and Wild, it knew when to create tension and give you scenes of levity to balance out the creepiness.
Finally, the ending is also dysfunctional and all over the place, the story had promised and started off interesting, but halfway through it fizzled out and relied on cheap tropes to get to the end faster.
The voice acting, stop motion animation, character and set design were all top tier amazing, but as per usual with Netflix originals, the story is unfocused and chaotic, the writing is confusing to follow even for a kids film, the magic isn't explained properly and finally the characters are either boring or detestable.
I hope Netflix greenlights better written projects because this one had so much potential to be good, but it disappointed me like so many other original Netflix works that it's just becoming a chore to watch these shows. I find myself criticizing these stories more than enjoying them, that's how depressing it's gotten.