I feel bad for not liking Wendell and Wild more. Clearly it’s a work of art as far as stop motion animation goes and it’s got a cool vibe and interesting, if off-putting, character design. But I think I just have to admit that, except for Coraline, I don’t really like the directorial style of Henry Sellick. Yes, I’m the monster who doesn’t like The Nightmare Before Christmas… and this movie wore out its welcome too.

Wendell and Wild is about a little girl who loses her parents and winds up a moody teenager at an all-girls school. A pair of demons voiced by (and modeled to look like) Key and Peele meanwhile have plans of their own which involve helping the girl raise her dead parents. But there’s corruption in this here town… and… you know, this plot is too stuffed to synopsize.

Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on this movie… probably too much for what it is. I did enjoy (and had a lot of hope for) the first third to half of the film. It felt like a fun but mature spooky movie for older children that I was enjoying.

But… dang… the plot just keeps going and introducing themes and ideas that overstuff the screen. The end result is just a lot of scenes that slowly advance all this plot but weren’t very interesting individually. Which turns the final half of the movie into a weird sluggishly paced mess. It loses all vibrancy and energy and just barely creeps along.

I never stopped appreciating the art and the ambition of the project so I’m not giving it a bad score. It’s a decent production that wound up feeling anemic though. I really wish I liked Sellick’s work more… or, rather, I wish I liked it as much as everyone else does.

Score: 74