Henry Sellick's first stop-motion animated film since 2009's beloved Coraline, Wendell & Wild melds beautiful artistry and a very funny script co-written by Jordan Peele.

The plot follows Kat, a young orphan shipped off to a private Catholic school for troubled girls, struggling with guilt over her perceived responsibility for her parents' tragic deaths. She also happens to be a Hellmaiden, able to summon the roguish demon brothers Wendell & Wild (played hilariously and to pitch perfection by comedy duo Key & Peele). They arrive in the land of the living to try and set up their lifelong dream project of running their own demonic funfair. Much chaos ensues.

I went in a bit blind on the story and wasn't sure what to expect, but Wendell & Wild might be the best stop motion film made since Coraline, or possibly just barely edging past it. Kat is a terrific protagonist, bucking trends and delivering more personality than all of LAIKA animation's somewhat milquetoast leads put together. There's a lot of artistic inventiveness on display, and the script is (for the most part) incredibly strong.

The film has only a couple downsides, which were a bit baffling considering the quality of the rest. Some of the scenes were a bit muddled, with events only making sense long after the fact (a particular sequence with an octopus and a glowing drawer left me scratching my head). The final act, while lots of fun, also feels like it's hastily wrapping up as much as it can in too short a time, with the credits rolling only moments after a bombastic finale - when it really, really could have used a couple more minutes to wind down with a nice epilogue.

This is a film that giddily enjoys keeping way more plates in the air than most films can get away with, and it results in a somewhat messy structure that makes it hard to tell who the main antagonist even is at any given moment, which seems to shift around wildly from scene to scene, from a gigantic Satan-like figure, to a pair of corrupt businessmen, to the titular brothers themselves, to a personal struggle against inner demons - before finally picking a clear lane in the last act. You just never know what direction the story is going to zig and zag to next, which is ultimately more of a strength than a weakness. Wendell & Wild is just as much a supernatural mystery film as it is an adventure/comedy, so viewers should be prepared to do a bit of sleuthing and not have anything spoon-fed.

This is not exactly a film for young kids, sporting heavy themes and a few dark moments, but it isn't that much scarier than Laika films like ParaNorman or Kubo and the Two Strings, only barely earning its PG-13 rating. Any kid that can handle The Nightmare Before Christmas (also directed by Sellick) should be OK with this.

Even with a few nitpicks holding it back, I give this film an easy 8/10. If you're an animation fan, you owe it to yourself to check this out... it's one of the most delightful and creative films in the entire stop-motion medium.

I love Henry Selick's work in Stop Motion, Coraline is even one of my all time favorite films, however this new effort has unfortunately left me a little cold.

On the technical side it is certainly something great but the script is really simple with an unbalanced pace.

The ending comes all of a sudden and the viewer is not given time to empathize with what's going on.

The protagonists are nice even if some have a design that didn't drive me crazy. However, the film is not a bad film but thinking about past works it does not even reach those levels a bit.

Such a shame as I was very confident for Wendell & Wild.

When I first saw this movie, I had high hopes. And then when it was over, I left the theaters delighted. I made sure not to miss a single scene, which I recommend. This is a fabulous movie. The characters were likable, it had a diverse cast, and the humor was excellent. I'm so glad Keegan and Jordan cane back together. And combined with Selicks demonically good animation style, This is easily one of the best movies of 2022. The only issue I had with it was the ending. It could have been longer, and it seemed a bit rushed. If they added in a solid 5 minutes, this movie would have been better. But still, this movie is a cinema masterpiece. This is a solid 8.489/10.