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It\u2019s the sets you notice first. Production design isn\u2019t normally the first thing that sticks out. And it will not be your only takeaway from watching Wildwood<\/em>. But what sets! What vistas! Reportedly over 100 \u2018locations\u2019 were built for this film, an enterprise which seems to laugh in the face of the normal limitations placed on stop-motion animation, a technology once dismissed as quite primitive. Yet watching this, you have the curious feeling as if you\u2019re watching a live-action movie \u2014 while at the same time, never once forgetting this was all conjured up by hundreds of artists, incrementally moving models by millimetres.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In every sense, this marks a significant step-up for Portland\u2019s Laika, in its sixth film. Not just technically, with animation more naturalistic and realistic, smoother motion and greater integration between practical and CG assists \u2014 but also more mature storytelling and a bigger, bolder narrative canvas. Their last film, 2019\u2019s Missing Link<\/em>, was a likeable but slight comedy about a Sasquatch named Susan. This, the second animated film directed by the company\u2019s CEO Travis Knight, is more in the mould of his last animated effort, Kubo And The Two Strings<\/em>: a serious if playful adventure about grief and loss.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n There is something of Studio Ghibli\u2019s Princess Mononoke<\/em> in its tone.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n It is based on the book written by Colin Meloy (lead singer of Portland rock heroes The Decemberists) and illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. For Laika \u2014 who snapped up the cinematic rights before publication \u2014 it perfectly matches their sensibilities: sensitive and earnest material, teeming with fantasy and magic but just as interested in humanity and pathos.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Like Laika itself, this is a product of, about, and set in Portland, Oregon, and Knight has fun gently playing with the Portlandia<\/em>-esque stereotypes \u2014 look out for the unicycling, fire-breathing Darth Vader \u2014 without ever feeling judgmental. It\u2019s more an affectionate love letter, the city beautifully rendered, with laser-printed pink blossom and cobbled streets. It\u2019s in this quirky, independent-minded city that we meet the McKeel family: mum and dad (voiced by Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine) are classic Oregon hippies and Burning Man veterans who knit their own beanies; their daughter Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a precocious, wiser-than-her-age teen who refuses to believe in magic, finds her hometown weird, and grumbles about having to babysit her brother Mac. When Mac is kidnapped by a murder of crows, she best start believin\u2019 in fairy tales: she\u2019s in one.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alongside dorky but good-hearted hanger-on and tabletop RPG enthusiast Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), they begin a rescue mission for her brother into the titular wildwood, the \u2018Impassable Wilderness\u2019. When Prue and Curtis enter a mysterious bridge-set portal \u2014 one of many Narnia-y touches \u2014 the pair find themselves thrust into a world of talking animals, druid mystics and warring factions, the weirdness of the city mirrored tenfold. As well as C.S. Lewis, there are flashes of J.R.R. Tolkien, Guillermo del Toro, the animal bureaucracy of Zootropolis<\/em> and all-out eccentricity of Labyrinth<\/em> (sure, why not have coyotes firing muskets?). There is also, in its reverence for and terror at the majesty of the natural world, something of Studio Ghibli\u2019s Princess Mononoke<\/em> in its tone, mysterious and moody and bloody.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Like Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s film, this is a dark piece of work. At one point we see a burnt-out battlefield strewn with the bloodied bodies of dead soldiers. The film even opens with a suicide, of sorts. With the kind of body count normally found in a 1980s Arnie actioner, this is definitely not suitable for very young kids. It\u2019s not just the violence, either. There are meaty themes here about grief and trauma, about family secrets and poisonous ideologies spreading like ivy, about learning to move past differences and join a deadly collective effort for an honourable cause. It is, among other things, a war film, with a jaw-dropping final battle sequence that recalls a Game Of Thrones<\/em> set-piece or the wushu<\/em> of Zhang Yimou.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But while it is defiantly high fantasy \u2014 characters include an enormous bird named Owl Rex (Richard E. Grant) and a law-enforcement bunny called Constable Samuel (Rob Delaney) \u2014 Knight maintains his focus on the character work. It is the nuanced, lovingly studied character animation that marks Wildwood<\/em> as such a step-up. From the micro to the macro, this is a film which stretches the bounds of what cinematic stop-motion can be. If anything, it\u2019s too<\/em> good, Laika\u2019s perfectionist tendencies meaning it\u2019s sometimes hard to tell where the hand-generated animation begins and the computer-generated touch-ups step in. That is the effect of a film like Wildwood<\/em>: like all great animation, it makes you believe in magic.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n Astonishing. An ode to outsiders and weirdos, alive with colour and atmosphere and eccentricity \u2014 and told on an expansive, ambitious canvas, of a scale never before seen in stop-motion animation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After her baby brother is kidnapped by crows, seventh-grader Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) enters Portland\u2019s mysterious, magical Wildwood \u2014 and finds herself embroiled in a fantastical civil war. It\u2019s the sets you notice first. Production design isn\u2019t normally the first thing that sticks out. And it will not be your only takeaway from watching Wildwood. 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