Wendell & Wild: A fractured Halloween fable

Wendell & Wild (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13 for dramatic intensity, violence, brief strong language, and an overall ookie-spooky atmosphere

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

The Brothers Grimm would have loved this film.

 

Director Henry Selick’s newest stop-motion fantasy is gleefully, grotesquely ghoulish: full-tilt macabre and disturbing at a level that absolutely warrants its PG-13 rating. (Parents, take note.)

 

While her sorta-kinda friend Raúl watches nervously, Kat prepares to have a close
encounter with something rather unpleasant.

But while the film looks fantastic, it’s somewhat over-written, with at least one sub-plot too many, and a tendency to short-change supporting characters who deserve more exposure. The clumsy script is by Selick and Jordan Peele, based on an unpublished book by Selick and Clay McLeod Chapman.

 

A fleeting prologue lasts just long enough to introduce 8-year-old Kat Elliot, who immediately loses her parents in a tragic car accident, for which she blames herself. (Bad enough that so many Disney films, animated or otherwise, feature characters who lose one parent; this poor girl loses both?)

 

Before we can wonder about Kat’s subsequent fate, we’re whisked to a cacophonous underworld setting, where an immense demon named Buffalo Belzer (voiced by Ving Rhames) has built a crazy-quilt amusement park for despondent lost souls on his massive chest. His two much smaller sons, Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Peele), spend eternity by applying dollops of rejuvenating hair cream on Belzer’s balding pate … all the while dreaming of building their own, vastly superior amusement park for the dear departed.

 

(Amusement parks for the dead? On a demon’s chest? Seriously? No wonder Selick and Chapman haven’t been able to sell their book.)

 

Time leaps ahead in the surface world. Kat (Lyric Ross), now a defiant, punk rock-loving 13-year-old, has endured the worst of the foster care system; she’s brought back to her home town — in shackles — for her “last-chance placement” at the local all-girls Catholic school. She’s shocked to see that her beloved community of Rust Bank is a sorry shadow of itself; her parents’ brewery burned to the ground shortly after their demise, and most homes and storefronts are barricaded, with ugly “Klax Korp” posters warning people not to trespass.

 

Kat’s sullen attitude doesn’t dent the chirpy greeting from the school’s preppy “RBC Girls”: Siobhan (Tamara Smart), Sweetie (Ramona Young) and Sloane (Seema Virdi), accompanied by their adorable pet goat. They want to become instant BFFs; Kat wants no part of them. She’s a bit more tolerant of Raúl (Sam Zelaya), a quiet, artistic trans lad who has turned the school attic into a well-appointed studio workshop.

 

The school is run by Father Bests (James Hong) and Sister Helley (Angela Bassett), with assistance from a couple of squat, forever scowling nuns dubbed Penguins (old joke, right?).

A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting: Family-friendly fantasy

A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting (2020) • View trailer

Three stars. Not rated, and suitable for all ages

By Derrick Bang 

Noting Ivan Reitman’s name among the producers of this delightful little fantasy explains much, as there’s a strong Ghostbusters vibe here.

 

Actually, let’s call this Netflix original “Buffy Meets the Ghostbusters.” Lite.

 

As they penetrate ever farther into the Grand Guignol's lair, Kelly (Tamara Smart, left)
and Liz (Oona Laurence) find it increasingly difficult to protect young Jacob (Ian Ho)
from this evil manipulator of dreams.

Director Rachel Talalay has been busy with television work, helming installments of everything ranging from Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, to Doctor Who and The Flash. Like Reitman, she has a solid handle on snarky, light-hearted fantasy, and she has just the right touch for this dip into Joe Ballarini’s children’s book trilogy.

 

Ballarini, also a director and screenwriter, handled the script himself. The result is a family-friendly romp with “scares” that are more fun than frightening.

 

Kelly Ferguson (Tamara Smart) is something of a nerdish introvert. On this particular evening, she wants to attend a raucous party in order to spend quality time near her secret crush. Alas, her mother lines her up with a babysitting assignment for the young son of Ms. Zellman (Tamsen McDonough, waspishly condescending), a high-society mover and shaker.

 

Jacob Zellman (Ian Ho) has trouble falling asleep. The poor kid is convinced that some of the toys in his room come to life at night, and he’s therefore reluctant to close his eyes, lest something dire occur.

 

That proves an understatement. Bad enough that Jacob gets stuffed into a satchel by a hideous little creature, and then dragged into a hole in the bedroom floor that quickly seals behind them. Kelly is further gobsmacked by the sudden appearance of the crisply resourceful Liz LeRue (Oona Laurence), who seems remarkably unruffled by these events.

 

Turns out Liz heads the local chapter of an international secret society of gifted babysitters who protect “special” children from monsters. This triggers a memory from Kelly’s own childhood, when — as a 4-year-old with a “gift of dreams” so vivid, that she could conjure and create real things from what she envisioned — she was rescued by a similarly adept babysitter.

 

Jacob has that same gift, which the vile Grand Guignol (Tom Felton) wishes to exploit, in order to unleash an army of nasty dream-critters on an unsuspecting world. He’s assisted by a trio of clumsy, squabbling, fire hydrant-size “Toadies” dubbed Snaggle, Roscoe and Jimmy, one of whom snatched the boy. (Imagine the Ghostbusters’ equally cranky Slimer, crossed with several Minions.)

 

Artemis Fowl: Quite foul

Artemis Fowl (2020) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG, for fantasy action and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.3.20

When fantasy goes bad, it goes really bad.

I’m not surprised Disney abandoned theatrical release for this fiasco, in favor of a debut on its Disney+ streaming service.

Things are about to get much worse: Our heroes — from left, Domovoi (Nonso Anozie),
Holly (Lara McDonnell), Mulch (Josh Gad) and Artemis (Ferdia Shaw) — react with
horror as a massive troll prepares to ... well ... eat them.

But I’m frankly astonished that director Kenneth Branagh kept his name on it, because this misbegotten adventure clearly endured post-production tampering that left major chunks of key plot details on the cutting-room floor. What remains makes no sense whatsoever.

You’ll spend half the film — if you’re foolish enough to waste time with it — muttering, “But what about…?”

Matters also aren’t helped by the fact that the title character is an arrogant, thoroughly obnoxious little snot. He’s played by first-time actor Ferdia Shaw, and boy, the inexperience shows. His so-called performance is stiff as a board, and he’s constantly upstaged by everybody else in the cast … not a good thing, for the designated star.

(Seriously, Kenneth? This was the best you could get out of the boy?)

I can’t imagine fans of Eoin Colfer’s popular young adult series liking anything about this film. Scripters Conor McPherson and Hamish McColl extracted bits and bobs from the first two books — 2001’s Artemis Fowl and 2002’s Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident — but largely fabricated their own original story; calling the result a disappointment is gross understatement.

Perhaps the biggest sin is that Artemis, Colfer’s feisty “13-year-old criminal mastermind,” has been bowdlerized — in typical Disney fashion — into a “12-year-old devil-may-care genius.” Ergo, this film’s Artemis doesn’t do any thieving; indeed, he’d accomplish very little, were it not for the far more heroic efforts of his colleagues.

He has been sanitized to the point of utter blandness.

Sad, sad, sad.

Branagh opens his film with a ludicrous media throng gathered outside Northern Ireland’s imposing Fowl Manor (actually Antrim’s Dunluce Castle), in the aftermath of some Cataclysmic Event. An imposing figure — we soon learn he’s Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad) — is spirited away to a remote interrogation facility, where he reveals what occurred via flashback.

Enter Artemis, who prefers surfing to the humdrum routine of school work that doesn’t begin to tax his massive intellect. (Not that the surfing has anything to do with what follows, but it did keep the six members of this film’s “Surf Unit” occupied.)