Review: Animated film "Wildwood" takes family audiences into a magic forest
The new stop-motion fantasy "Wildwood" from US studio Laika follows a 12-year-old girl rescuing her baby brother from crows. The Guardian's reviewer calls it a pleasingly old-fashioned family adventure.
Laika, the Portland, Oregon-based animation studio behind "Coraline", has released a new family fantasy film, "Wildwood". The Guardian's reviewer describes it as an engaging adventure made in the studio's distinctive stop-motion style, in which movement is created by photographing puppets and sets frame by frame.
The screenplay was written by Chris Butler, based on the bestselling book of the same title by Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy, a member of the band The Decemberists. The director is Travis Knight, Laika's lead animator.
The story
The film is set in present-day Portland. Twelve-year-old Prue, voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, looks after her baby brother Mac one day. Her classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), who has a crush on her, tags along. At a play area, a flock of crows carries Mac off to the forest beside the city, shown in the film as an impassable wilderness, or "wildwood" – a parallel world of talking animals and oppressed humans.
Prue and Curtis follow the child. The forest is ruled jointly by a supercilious and incompetent governor (Marc Evan Jackson) and an evil dowager governess voiced by Carey Mulligan, who commands an army of coyotes in redcoats. The governess carries deep sadness over a terrible loss, shown in the opening section along with a failed cover-up. The bandit leader Brendan, voiced by Mahershala Ali, is also involved in the final reckoning.
Assessment
The reviewer finds that stop-motion gives a more organic and physically immediate feel than Pixar's ubiquitous digital look. In his view, the story did not clearly justify the governess's plan, and it lacks the scary punch of "Coraline", apart from the opening sequence.
