I've loved most of Laika's movies, with the possible exception of Missing Link. My true love from their catalogue is Kubo and the Two Strings.
Their new movie Wildwood is... something I have complicated feelings about.
It's a beautiful movie. All of the visuals, the puppets, the backgrounds, the titular woods, everything is gorgeous. There's also a particular movement quality to Laika's particular stop motion animation that is instantly recognisable.
And this is, at least here in Australia, an M rated (nobody under 15) animated movie. This isn't a kid's movie by any stretch of the imagination. Even though it's about children.
It's also based on a book.
I went it with fairly high expectations.
The first half of the movie honestly failed to win me over. The second half of the movie did a much better job. But I left with the decided feeling that the source material this is based on is... weak.
Because this story is just kinda Labyrinth. It's kind of Narnia. It's kind of a lot of things. It's also kind of all the wrong answers on a multiple choice quiz. Which is a line I've used before, but it's true here. They're not the really terrible wrong answers, they're all just ideas that are not connected in a way that really works given what's happening.
And the bits where you go "but why is the character doing that, that's not how these things are supposed to go" would throw me outside of the movie briefly. Because yes, playing around with tropes and expectations is great, this version just felt like it kept bringing the story to a screeching halt when it did.
Being thrown out of the movie happened quite a bit actually. There was more than there should have been moments of "why was that necessary?" or "what is that adding?".
The second half does hit some of the correct emotional beats though... basically from the point the movie actually explains what is actually going on with the main character, things improve. I also have some issues with presenting what should be a semi redeemable villain and then just not bothering. Maybe that comes from a "we're going to write a sequel" idea in the original text, I don't know.
The M rating is mostly about the violence here. And like a lot of this movie, my thought was often "well, do we actually NEED this". We know the villain is evil, the character knows that they're evil, by does this piece of violence need to underscore that.
Yes, some of it is very Big Fantasy Battle scene from something like Narnia... but it was mostly just nameless background extra death. None of it necessarily feels impactful. Like I said, it often just felt... not gratuitous... but not necessary.
I don't think the movie is bad... I just think that the original story is not well crafted and the adaptation isn't fixing some of those issues. The movie is very beautiful and has some great moments, but it never rises to be above the sum of it's parts.
yani's rating: 2 lost skeletons out of 5
