LogFAQs > #975305426

15. Wendell and Wild

Johnbobb: 3
Inviso: 11
Evillord: 13
Mythiot: 13
Suprak: 14
Karo: 17
Red: 17
Plasma: 21
Ermine: 28

Total: 137

Johnbobb: This is the kind of movie where despite its flaws I know for a fact I'm gonna be watching it on Halloweens to come. It's funny and weird and just an absolute joy to watch start to finish

Inviso: Its weird, because normally, I feel like the last movie I watch on these lists tends to be like, either extremely good or extremely bad, just to truly cap off a long list of movies. But Wendell and Wild is likeits middle of the road for this list. Its definitely on the weirder side of things, and it has that Coraline style, but with Key & Peeles comedic sensibilities. As such, theres a certain level of jankness and griminess to the animation itself, and I acknowledge that my opinions on grossness are impacting this ranking. But at the same time, I appreciate the humor and blatant on-the-nose nature of making a villain who looks exactly like Donald Trump as a greedy, evil, capitalist land developer (with his bitchy wife), but I also liked Raoul, and how Siobhan came across as vapid, but she was really a good person at the end of the day. It was a decent movie overall at least.

Evillord: An aesthetic fusion between Nightmare Before Christmas/Coraline director Henry Selick and the Key & Peele duo, whose voices and likenesses are also used for the titular comically inept demon brothers. The story focuses heavily on criticism of systemic American issues like the school to prison pipeline, private prisons, and corporate greed in general, centered on a company with the rather on-the-nose name of Klaxon Korp. Things end up resolving so neatly and perfectly, with Klaxon ruined, its CEOs in prison, and the communities they've destroyed rebuilt, that it feels naive, though, more like a guide for kids on protest and lobbying than an affecting portrayal of these heinous manifestations of capitalism and the damage they cause. There are definitely a few too many lore ideas to fit into a single movie, leading to some anti-climactic resolutions like the fight against the demon daddy who quickly and peacefully agrees to go home. It also suffers from the presentation quality issues that are apparently common to Netflix animation - the voice acting is just not up to snuff in that opening trauma sequence. It's definitely not as clever as Get Out or as captivating as Coraline. Still, it's a fun, energetic, and inclusive movie with likeable main characters, especially the badass demon nun.

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Karo: A troubled orphan randomly discovers she is a 'hell maiden' who can do a lot of weird shit that wasn't explained too well, and thus she decides to engage in a spot of necromancy with the help of her new demon friends.
The titular characters in question are not only annoying and unfunny, but they are irrelevant as well. They have no purpose in the film other than being a convenient way to bring dead characters back to life and feel more like Kay and Peele unnecessarily inserting themselves for kicks into a movie they were producing. They put as much of a strain on the movie as the dipshit gargoyles did to Hunchback of Notre Dame, and I am constantly like can we please just enjoy Kat's compelling story without you two herping and derping all over the place?
The human children are wonderful, I feel great care was take not to make their characterization cliched or stereotypical based on their backgrounds, and also features what I believe to be the first transgender character in a mainstream animated movie from this country so hurrah for that.
A lot of zombies and evil corporate fuckery later, the plot climaxes in an incredibly stupid and forced friendship is magic moment where there's this demon hunter who was imprisoning and torturing Satan's children for decades but decides to give them up because Satan seems like such a caring dad. Satan is then like oh you're such a nice guy and everyone is buddies now for some reason? Are they all fucking high or what.
Anyway the gist of this movie is it needed more scenes with the kids, less scenes with the demons. Making the supernatural elements more mysterious and unexplained would have honestly served the narrative better anyway.

Red: Not sure in the slightest why they decided to title this "Wendell and Wild", they are easily the worst part of the film, two annoying demons that conveniently get high on suspicious looking, umm, hair cream, that they discover can also raise the dead. I think this movie ends up being surprisingly fun with the zombies and the evil corporate messaging, but also severely misses the mark when it comes to consistent characterization. So many characters flip flop their personalities or just get reduced to "not as bad as they seem" without necessarily being given enough justification or notification. But Wendell and Wild being both annoying, incompetent, along with being tied in with the aforementioned inconsistent, really drag this down. Hell the whole of the endgame plot is setup because they happened to dig sideways instead of straight up. They succeed at being intentionally infuriating. The hellmaiden plot or whatever, it isn't done well. So many things you just have to accept for plot convenience. There is some oddly good messaging baked in here, but you have to look over a lot of garbage to see it.

Plasma: There are a lot of creative ideas heretoo many, in fact. At times it felt like the writers were trying to set a Guinness World Record by cramming in as many storylines, characters, and wacky concepts as possible. It made for a messy movie, but thankfully the stop-motion animation was well done and Kats journey had heart.

Ermine: This is one of those films where all of the characters just feel a little bit off and are all unlikeable. The plot is so... I wouldn't say confusing, but it just doesn't make any sense at all and oftentimes you are just like "what?".
So you have these two idiot demons who use this weird hair cream stuff to bring things back to life and want to make an amusement park for some reason or another. That's never really elaborated on because it's such a weak plot and motivation point.
Except this cream works completely differently in nearly every scenario... for no reason at all. It completely revives a bug, no issues at all. But then when it revives people, it's different each time? Kat's parents get off scott-free, they get to look and act almost like normal, except when it revives the dead Klaxon members, they look and all act like zombies? For some reason? I don't get it. Why? Why wouldn't they act like their normal selves like literally everyone else who got revived did?
Because ZOMBIES FUNNY HAHA SO FUNNY! Fuck off.
Once again, the humor falls so incredibly flat for this film, I don't even think I chuckled once, and at nearly 2 hours of runtime, god this was a slog to get through.