BEFORE: James Hong carries over again from "Turning Red". I guess if "Confess, Fletch" was something of a "Mad Men" reunion, today it's a "Key & Peele" reunion, right? Both this film and yesterday's film are Oscar-eligible in the "Best Animated Feature" category, so I'll have a couple of dogs in that fight for sure, but really, the front-runner this year is probably that version of "Pinocchio" directed by Guillermo Del Toro, which the Academy is listing under the letter "G" and not "P" and I've got something of an issue with that. We don't list "The Nightmare Before Christmas" under "T" for "Tim Burton", do we? We put it under "N" because strictly speaking, the director's name should not be considered as part of the title. I understand there may be some confusion in the marketplace since Disney also released a version of "Pinocchio" last year, but still....
My first thought was to include this in a horror chain, but it just doesn't link to any of the horror films currently on my list, not even if I consider "Nope" a horror film. So, that would probably mean I wouldn't be able to get to this one in Year 15, but it's relevant NOW if it's Oscar-eligible plus it's going to help make the connection to tomorrow's film and that's (eventually) going to get me to "Glass Onion" and "No Time to Die" next weekend - then a few more films after that with 2022 release dates, so that means it belongs HERE.
(It also links to "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", but that film's not streaming yet, so for the moment, that doesn't help me. I'll check back on this in March.)
THE PLOT: Two scheming brothers, Wendell and Wild, enlist the aid of 13-year-old Kat Elliot to summon them to the Land of the Living.
AFTER: There are a few plot elements that carry over from "Turning Red" here, namely that the lead character is a 13-year-old girl, who discovers that she has a hidden power, and her school posse consists of three other girls and one boy. OK here that boy is a trans boy, or a self-identified boy, or whatever people are calling it now, but hey, it's all about inclusion now. And the complex issues of parenting are explored in both films, but here Kat's parents are dead, at least at first, and she feels guilty because of how they died, it might be partially her fault. If only there were a way to bring them back...
I really had to watch this one twice, almost, because my sleeping schedule got even more out of whack than usual - I got up early so we could drive out to Long Island, and then I had a nap in the afternoon when we got back, a couple of hours I think. But then when I started running the movie after midnight, I found myself drifting off, and I saw parts of "Wendell & Wild" that made no sense, because I'd been asleep for maybe a half-hour. I drifted off again and the credits were rolling, so that meant I had to go back a whole hour and pick up from the last thing that I definitely remembered happening. At this point I don't know whether to blame this on my fatigue or the film's inability to hold my attention, maybe it's a little bit of both.
Some things were just plain confusing, but then, that's what Wikipedia is for, right? In the opening, Kat's parents run a root beer brewery in the town of Rust Bank, where a developer couple wants to build a prison, but there is strong community objection to it. Driving home on a rainy night, Kat bites into an apple and sees a two-headed worm, and she screams, which causes her father to drive off the bridge, and her parents drown after telling her to swim up to safety. Why they couldn't also leave the car, I'm not sure - from what I know about a car being submerged in water, it's difficult to open the car door at first due to the water pressure, but after letting water in through the window, it should get EASIER to open the doors and escape. Gotta call a NITPICK POINT here, but obviously their deaths move the story forward.
Five years later, Kat returns to the town to attend Catholic school, run by Father Bests and a bunch of nuns. The parents of one of her classmates are the developer couple who have taken over most of the town to build that prison, but the community board keeps voting against it, despite the fact that most people and businesses have left. Apparently the root beer brewery was burned in a fire and all of its workers died. Yeah.
Kat receives a mark on her hand while in class, and Sister Helley tells her she must hide it - it's the mark of a "hell maiden", and then in a nightmare she's contacted by two demons who promise to bring her parents back to life if she will summon them to the land of the living. Wendell & Wild tell her how to find a stuffed bear that will give her directions - they are tired of spending their days working in the underworld on Buffalo Belzer's "Scream Faire", a place where souls are tortured, and they have plans to build a competing "Dream Faire", which would supposedly be better. So the underworld is a giant carnival where souls are tortured on the rides - I'm kind of OK with that. The two demons discover that the hair cream they use on the giant demon Belzer not only restores his hair follicles, it brings dead things back to life.
Kat follows the instructions and brings the two demons out of the underworld, and they proceed to resurrect Father Bests, who was killed by the developer couple, who also forbid them to resurrect Kat's parents, which they promised to do. Instead they bring the old dead town council members back to life, and thanks to a loophole in the city's rules, there are now enough votes to build the prison - there's no rule AGAINST dead council members voting, after all. (Ah, the "Air Bud" conundrum...there was no rule against a dog playing basketball.)
Things keep getting more complicated from there, so now I DON'T think it was my fault - the alliances keep changing and there are plans within plans and it's a real chore to keep track of it all. So damn, if I found this confusing, how are KIDS going to follow all of this plot, with ever-shifting sands? It all comes to a head when the giant demon Buffalo Belzer realizes that his demon servants are missing (and so is his hair cream) so he makes his way to the surface world and attacks as a giant. (Another connection to "Turning Red", with the giant panda attack in the finale.). But the giant demon is also a father, so parenting wins out over all, really, he just wants his kids to come back.
I really couldn't find much information about WHERE this stop-motion animation was made, I know the animators were based in Portland, Oregon, but that's all I could determine. Years ago I used to work for Laika, formerly known as Will Vinton Studios, and I took a few trips to Portland for annual sales meetings. The company had purchased a number of large buildings to produce stop-motion TV shows like "The PJs" and "Gary & Mike", they were also working on feature films like "Coraline" and "Paranorman". So yeah, I'd love to know if this was made at Laika, or in one of their buildings that I visited, but I don't recognize any of the animators' names, so perhaps not. Or maybe they sold off those buildings to another animation company, but there's really no information available about that - I can't even determine the NAME of the company that did this animation, which is a little odd.
(Ah, a little more sleuthing, and I've learned that Laika was not associated with this production, however the animation supervisors both used to work for Laika, and the "studio" that made this was based in Milwaukie, OR, where Laika used to have their warehouse-like studios. Portland, of course, is known for a lot of animation production, so it's possible that they rented out Laika's old buildings, or new studios were built across town, but it doesn't really matter.)
Also starring the voices of Keegan-Michael Key (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania"), Jordan Peele (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Lyric Ross, Angela Bassett (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back"), Ving Rhames (last seen in "Father FIgures"), Sam Zelaya, Tamara Smart (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Seema Virdi, Ramona Young, Michele Mariana (last seen in "What the #$*! Do We (K)now?"), Natalie Martinez (last seen in "Reminiscence"), Tantoo Cardinal (last seen in "Legends of the Fall"), Igal Naor (last seen in "Rendition"), Gary Gatewood, Gabrielle Dennis (last seen in "Girls Trip"), David Harewood (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Maxine Peake (last seen in "The Theory of Everything"), Phoebe Lamour, Nick E. Tarabay (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Joseph Tran, Caroline Crawford, Mandy Hutchings, Jacob Lawrence Kreiss (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story").
RATING: 5 out of 10 falafel dinners
No comments:
Post a Comment