Wendell and Wild should get you giddy. Pair the horror musings of Jordan Peele with the off-kilter stop motion magic of Henry Selick, the Nightmare Before Christmas animator. That unholy collab is bound to create something exciting, especially for the strange kids. Wendell and Wild probably could have been better, but as is, its still a nice treat for the weird ones craving something different.
Kat Eliot’s (Lyric Ross) life is filled with tragedy. Accidents befall those close to her; she’s plagued by demons; and she’s bounced around orphanages for years, hardening her view on life in her town of Rust Bank. Kat ends up at the Catholic high school, where her demons Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele) propose to her to bring her parents back to life…if she brings them into her world first. Which goes…about as well as you might expect this shortsighted plan to.
At times it feels like Key, Peele, and Selick are just throwing a bunch of ingredients into the black cauldron to see what will come out. Kat’s story is the through line, but to get her where she needs to go, we get all sorts of crazy. Inside the school, we’ve got undead teachers, Nuns with superpowers, janitor hitmen, Mean Girls, and art projects Kat has to navigate through. And we haven’t even touched her demons Wendell and Wild, who add even more strange nonsense like hair cream with magical powers, amusement parks, corporate profiteering, rigged city council elections, and of course, a smattering of zombies. In small doses, each of these hairbrained schemes of ideas add fun texture to Wendell and Wild, but when thrown into the plotted brew, it makes the film hard to follow even for adults, let alone the poor children this is probably aimed at.
Fortunately, Selick hasn’t lost his touch at emotional poignancy. Kat Eliot is a perfect Selick character: on the surface, she’s a hard nosed but wholly unique individual who marches to the beat of her own boombox. But underneath that gruff exterior is a lonely, broken girl, traumatized by her past. The movie uses the zaniness around Kat to keep Selick’s hand hidden enough, but when the movie really has to land its emotional beats, there’s enough good character storytelling in there to deliver. Those moments get their power from their simplicity: we all have demons, but we all can learn how to control them and make our lives better, a wonderful message and the real magic in Wendell and Wild.
Or you could just hand around for the root beer brewery to reopen in Rust Bank. Wendell and Wild is like letting your brain daydream and go whereever it wants around Halloween, mixing free flowing ideas with a little bit of creepy. Even Jordan Peele has to let his freak flag fly every once in an animated while, but unlike us, his freak flag is Angela Basset with Nun superpowers. Wow, that’s SO much better than mine!