Movie Review: In 'Wildwood,' tons of stop-start work build a world the story can’t match

Everything about “Wildwood” is ambitious. It's a stop-motion animated movie that stretches over two hours, with 230 hand-controlled puppets across 132 sets, shot frame by frame by frame by frame. It sounds exhausting to make and that's also sometimes what it feels like to watch it.

Wildly industrious, terribly quirky and technically dazzling, “Wildwood” is also overly violent and uses labor-intensive world-building to only slightly tweak fairy tale conventions. It's a movie in which individual toes curl and feathers rustle gloriously but the message is a wan, “Don't be in a hurry to grow up.” The technology outstrips the story.

“Wildwood” is based on a 2011 middle-grade fantasy novel written by Colin Meloy, frontman for The Decemberists, and illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. The movie has a screenplay by Chris Butler, direction by Travis Knight and a new stomping song by The Decemberists, “The Better Part of Bravery.”

It centers on a sullen teenager, Prue McKeel, who lives in Portland, Oregon, with her overprotective parents — weirdly, her dad totally looks like Post Malone without facial tattoos — and baby brother, Mac. It's VERY Portland, with nice nods to Powell’s City of Books and Voodoo Donuts. At one point, the filmmakers embrace the weird with a passing image of what looks like a guy on a unicycle playing flaming bagpipes wearing a Darth Vader mask.

Prue doesn't believe in anything but the world she can see outside her window — “I'm not buying it. I don't want any part of your fairy tale,” she says — despite her parents embrace of spirituality. “There's magic in you,” says dad.

When Prue is looking after Mac one day at the playground, a group of crows snatches him and fly away to a place called the Impassable Wilderness. Prue, nicely voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, naturally pursues, along with a reluctant companion, Curtis, an awkward gamer with a schoolyard crush.

In the wild, there is, of course, a massive data center — no, it's just a fantastically realized forest protected by magic, with light bouncing off ferns and glorious waterfalls. It also has talking animals, bandits, soldiers, farmers, fussy bureaucrats and a stern Dowager Governess (Carey Mulligan), who sounds friendly but may be hiding a nefarious plan. There's a K9 police officer in a tie and a leather jacket who seems pretty smart but nonetheless chases his own tail.

“I don't know whether this is terrifying or adorable,” Prue says, as she encounters rams in suits and tortoises carrying mail on their backs. “Wildwood” is a bit of both; the terrifying includes a beheading, bloody hand-to-hand combat, eyes being gouged out, animals in chains, prisoners shot in cages and a crying baby with a dagger plunging toward his abdomen.

Prue must band together the good humans and animals in this land to defeat the baddies and rescue her brother, uncovering a shocking family secret along the way (and it's not, apparently, that her dad is Post Malone). It's all pretty standard stuff. One thing that isn't standard is the film's hatred for invasive English ivy, but that gets lost in the weeds.

Take a pause for the work that's gone into this: More than 142,000 3D faces were printed for the puppets, 3,800 feathers were crafted for one giant eagle, and the whole thing took so long to make that 85 production babies were born. Some puppets were built with imbedded devices that make them look like they're breathing.

Some of the celebrity voices really stand out, especially a rat by Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay's Curtis and an owl by Richard E. Grant. But others make little impression. Only at the credits did I learn Tom Waits voiced a coyote.

The filmmakers have been faithful to the world Meloy and Ellis originally created, but it takes a while to get used to. There's an army of snarling coyotes — they're suddenly having a moment thanks to this and “Coyote vs. Acme” — who wear what look like 18th century military uniforms with tall black hats and gold brocade epaulettes. Why, is not clear. This forest has muskets and rusty mail gasoline-powered trucks. It’s all very twee, not very organic.

The filmmakers use this fantastical world to try to talk about grief, growing up, environmentalism and unity in the face of fascism, but none convincingly. Why Curtis has to show he's finally a hero only with violence is a sad way to come of age. And what Prue has learned after all this mayhem is unclear. Even so, the sheer amount of labor in this labor of love has to be applauded. One of the best lines appears after the credits: “This film was handmade in Oregon.”

“Wildwood,” a Fathom Entertainment release that opens in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language.” Running time: 132 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.