Jeff
Jeff reviewed Wildwood solo since Matt wasn't able to see it in time. It's Laika's most ambitious production yet, with 136 hand-built sets and 231 puppets, all stop-motion with no CGI. Travis Knight directs, adapting Colin Meloy's novel about a girl from Portland whose baby brother is abducted by a witch, sending her into the woods to rescue him and get tangled up in factional politics among its inhabitants. Jeff praised the artistry without reservation, but the story itself didn't grab him the way a Narnia story would have, and he found the dense, busy composition of nearly every shot a little overwhelming across the film's two-hour-plus runtime. He's torn between a four and a four and a half, and landed on four out of five. He flagged one PG-13 moment worth knowing about going in: a robot character's self-destruction, and a scene of robot nudity that caught the whole theater off guard.