Wendell & Wild

Fantastic stop-motion animation and a strong lead character are undermined by an overstuffed cast and chaotic storyline.

If, like me, you hear the name Henry Selick and immediately think of terrific films like “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Coraline” and “James the Giant Peach,” then we’ve spotted another stop-motion animation fan.

There’s just something intrinsically organic and tactile about stop-motion, in which animators work with live puppets rather than computers, posing them in minutely different positions for each frame of film. It’s an incredibly meticulous, time-consuming method only suited for obsessives.

(Though nowadays, most stop-motion also incorporates some CGI for backgrounds and special effects.)

I was extremely excited about “Wendell & Wild,” Selick’s first directorial feature in 13 years, and the fact he was partnering with “Get Out” and “Us” filmmaker Jordan Peele, who-cowrote the screenplay with Selick (based on the book by Clay McLeod Chapman) and serves as a producer and one of the main voice talents.

In keeping with the macabre theme of Selick’s other films, it’s an appropriately Halloween-y story filled with demons, zombies, dark magic and other occult goodies — presented in a kid-friendly way with musical numbers, of course. The movie received a PG-13 rating from the MPAA, probably because of some worms wriggling in corpses, though I’d say it’s OK for all but the youngest watchers.

Peele does the voice of Wild, and his “Key & Peele” partner Keegan-Michael Key provides that of Wendell, two demonic brothers who decide to sneak away from hell to the topside to launch their plan for a “dream faire.” They recruit Kat (Lyric Ross), a surly 13-year-old orphan, as their human thrall. But she’s got her own ideas about bringing back her parents from the dead and saving her hometown of Rust Bank, which is about to be bulldozed for a massive private prison.

Kat’s a hard-edged, brassy protagonist, a Black girl with eyebrow rings, green afro puffs, a penchant for punk rock and a surly ‘tude. She carries a huge weight of resentment and guilt, since her parents were killed in a car accident she had a hand in causing. Tough and unapologetic, Kat is a refreshing break from the naïfs and emo-boys who usually populate these affairs.

It’s notable that the cast consists almost entirely of Black and brown characters, with corresponding actors doing the voices. Of course, it can be hard to tell given their various dour shadings, as some are inhuman and others morph from alive to dead (and sometimes back again). I could only identify one character who seems to be white, and she’s half of the couple running the evil Klax Korp (just one “k” away!) that burned down Kat’s parents’ brewery.

My big problem with “Wendell & Wild” is not that it’s too colorful, but too overstuffed with a cast of minor hanger-on characters who needed to either be jettisoned or more developed. There’s Father Bests (James Hong), the seemingly benevolent leader of the Catholic school for girls where Kat is assigned; Sister Helley (Angela Bassett), who bonds with Kat over some shared history and brings a big can of whoop-ass along her nun’s habit; Siobhan (Tamara Smart), a seemingly too-perfect mean girl competitor at school; a strange old demon-hunter in a wheelchair who resembles Marlon Brando; and Raul (Sam Zelaya), a trans boy who’s given little to do but buff up the film’s tokenism appeal.

Ving Rhames has a few boisterous moments as Buffalo Belzer, a Devil-ish figure who rules over the underworld and has a sort of amusement park/purgatory for the damned built onto his massive belly.

Wendell & Wild, who despite the film’s title are just sidekicks, had been consigned to working in Belzer’s scalp as hair farmers regrowing his constantly-departing locks. It turns out their master’s magic cream will bring the dead back to life — along with being a tummy-tickling snack for demons — so they decide to abscond with the thaumaturgical toiletry and establish their own, more agreeable “dream fair” in the land of the living.

The main reason to watch “Wendell & Wild” is the amazing animation, which is so dense and fast-moving I felt the desire to rewind scenes and watch them again so I could drink in every detail. The supernatural sequences are dominated by purple colors, transparent imagery and shifts in perspective, so it often feels like we’re falling through a necrotic dream.

The focus on rotting bodies, wiggly worms, popped eyeballs and such tickles my twisted fancy, though I can see where some children and parents might find it stomach-churning.

The first section is rather slow-moving and turgid — lots of introducing that overstuffed roster of characters — and if I’m being a completely honest critic, I may have nodded off a little bit while watching with my boys. But things pick up in the second half and “Wendell & Wild” comes to a brisk, satisfying conclusion that is emotionally hefty without ladling on the sentiment.

This film may not hold a candle to some of Selick’s earlier efforts, but in some ways it feels like their ADD cousin, who has a good heart but has trouble staying focused. It’s a wild, chaotic and gorgeous ride.