![]() ![]() Wendell & Wild is scripted by Selick and Peele, who also pulls double-duty reuniting with Key to voice the down-on-their-luck title demons, who are stuck in a nether-realm where they’ve been sentenced to apply magical hair-regrowth cream to the balding head of their father and overlord Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames), a satanic goliath whose stomach is the platform for a Scream Faire frequented by endlessly shrieking souls. Yet Selick has never been one to pander or coddle, and anyway, there’s so much imagination on display that multiple viewings will be more than welcome. It’s difficult to envision younger viewers keeping track of every crazily intertwined plot strand featured in this odyssey, which races, veers and loop-de-loops like one of Hell’s rollercoasters. Selick’s brand is madcap spookiness underscored by grief, anger and longing, and his latest delivers that in spades, almost to the point of bursting from distension. So ingenious that its only shortcoming is an overabundance of ideas, it’s a stop-motion triumph for the director, and will be a feather in Netflix’s 2022 cap when-after its premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival-it debuts on the streaming platform on October 28.Īs with Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas, Selick’s Wendell & Wild is a macabre tale of demonic dimensions populated by the dead and deviant of plucky heroes damaged by tragedy and coping with fractured families of friendships forged through trial and tribulation and of carnivalesque madness involving squishy insectoids, goofy dancing skeletons, and all manner of additional otherworldly sights. Henry Selick is one of modern animation’s zaniest visionaries, and following a 13-year hiatus, he returns-teaming with Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key-for Wendell & Wild, a phenomenal phantasmagoria that blends the dark, demented inventiveness of his prior work with the ribald humor and spiky sociopolitical commentary of the comedy duo. ![]()
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