Wildwood

NOW IN THEATERS! We haven’t heard from LAIKA Studios in a long time, and there’s a good reason. In Wildwood, we’re presented with one of the most ambitious stop-motion animated features ever made, but does the film lean too heavily on art, or does it have a solid story at its core?

Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) thinks she’s too old for fairy tales, especially her father’s tale of the Impassable Wilderness. She lives in Portland with her hipster parents, Mr. McKeel (Jake Johnson) and Mrs. McKeel (Maya Erskine), and her baby brother Mac (Arthur Knight). Her parents have one strict rule for each kid. Mac isn’t allowed to leave the house, and Prue must stay far away from a wooded area called the Impassable Wilderness. So, naturally, the second Mom and Dad step out, Prue hitches Mac’s red wagon to the back of her bike, and the two go on an adventure through the city. At the Dripster coffee shop, she runs into her classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), who has a crush on Prue and decides to join the McKeels’ adventure uninvited.

Prue takes Mac to his favorite playground. As Mac plays and Curtis distracts Prue, sinister forces fill the air. Suddenly, a murder of crows swoops down and snatches Mac. The birds carry Mac over the trees and into the Impassable Wilderness. Prue and Curtis race after them, and on the outskirts of the forest, green ivy magically opens a passageway into the Wilderness and the land of Wildwood.

Prue and Curtis are split up. Curtis falls into the hands of Maxim (Tom Waits), a coyote in a soldier’s uniform and the most loyal servant of a grief-mad Dowager Governess named Alexandra (Carey Mulligan). Curtis is then enlisted in her army. Prue, meanwhile, is taken to a village inhabited by humans and animals. As an outsider, she is arrested and locked away. Now, Curtis and Prue are on two very different journeys to find little Mac.

Alexandra summons a glowing blue spell in her candlelit chamber in Wildwood.

“Prue McKeel thinks she’s too old for fairy tales, especially her father’s tale of the Impassable Wilderness.”

Let me just start by saying Wildwood is the most ambitious stop-motion animation film I’ve ever seen. The breadth of the sets is immense. The forest scenes are vast, the colors are beautiful, and so many characters are on screen at once that I walked out exhausted just thinking about how they made this movie. If you know anything about stop-motion, you know what that means. Wildwood was 16 years in the making, with about five years of that spent on the actual animation, and it shows. The detail is so intricate. Without question, this is a beautiful movie. It is an ambitious movie. But personally, I’m not sure that’s enough to say I’m in the “great” camp.

The story falls many steps short of being great. When you hear people say this movie is great, they’re talking only about the visuals, but I need a story to match them. Wildwood doesn’t really get moving until the halfway point. Once you realize what’s actually happening, it gets interesting. I see a lot of great elements story-wise: a journey, talking animals, a bit of magic, and epic battles I never thought I’d see in stop-motion animation. I just wish the story were stronger, because in stop-motion, it’s hard to change course once production is underway. I think, if anything, it’s too big. We follow a main plot with Prue, then a second main plot with Curtis, and then a side quest about Prue’s parents. By the end, it all felt bloated.

Another good thing is that the villain isn’t misunderstood or forgiven for all the terrible things she does. She’s held accountable, and you don’t see that in movies these days.

Parents, take note. Wildwood is not for little kids. When the opening scene played, my first thought was, “Are they really opening the movie with this?” Kudos to LAIKA for making it a powerful scene, but man, for kids? It could have been done differently. There’s also a gratuitous lesbian moment that I picked up on. If you’re going, bring your older kids. In the end, I’m giving Wildwood a bare recommendation. I walked away feeling like this movie could’ve been great, but from a story standpoint, it just couldn’t find its way there.