Wendell & Wild / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Father Bests' preoccupation with keeping the school open out of concern for the wellbeing of his students, staff, community, or some combination of the three? Or does he just want to keep his cushy job? On a related note, what exactly is his role in the brewery fire? Did he agree to falsely vouch for the Klaxons after the fire or beforehand (meaning he had a chance to stop it but didn't)? If he only vouched for them afterward, did he know they were the arsonists, choose to be willfully blind, or honestly think they were innocent (in which case his comment about vouching for them could be a reminder that he stood by them when they were under suspicion that they took entirely the wrong way)?
Awesome Art: It's Henry Selick's return to stop motion thirteen years after Coraline; of course this applies. Special mention goes to the Amusement Park of Doom that Buffalo Belzer runs.
Awesome Music: The gorgeous, haunting score is once again provided by composer Bruno Coulais, and peppered throughout are several punk classics, by artists like X-Ray Specs, The Specials, and Big Joanie.
Base-Breaking Character: Fans either love Manberg for his badass past and Pet the Dog moments or hate him for his exploitation of other characters, with the fact that he is the only Jewish character in the movie^note adding heat to both sides of the argument.
Complete Monster: Lane and Irmgard Klaxon are the devious CEOs of Klax Corp. Already mass murderers before the film even begins, the Klaxons burned down a brewery full of innocent people in order to bankrupt the town of Rust Bank, prefacing their plans to demolish the abandoned town and replace it with a private prison system. When the one living witness to their plan suggests he might talk out, the Klaxons immediately brain him with a golf club and toss him in a pond to drown. The Klaxons seek to make a profit by deliberately destroying the futures of hundreds of children, setting them up to fail in a crooked education system to ensure they inevitably end up in the private prison. The Klaxons are portrayed with fewer humanizing qualities than literal soul-torturing demons, ordering their own daughter killed and even turning on each other when their plans go south.
Friendly Fandoms: With Turning Red due to both animated films having non-white 13-year-old female protagonists who have supernatural abilities. Also, both films were nominated for the Annie Award for best animated feature of 2022.
LGBT Fanbase: The movie has been praised by the LGBT community for how it gave an accurate and respectful portrayal of a trans male major character in Raul. His mother defends him when he's misgendered, he's allowed to dress in a boy's uniform at his school, Siobhan genuinely and immediately apologizes to Raul for accidentally deadnaming him, and Kat doesn't even care about seeing an old photo of him before transitioning, being more surprised that he was friends with Siobhan.
Magnificent Bastard: Manberg "the Merciless" is Rust Bank's Catholic school janitor and secretly a demon hunter who in the past captured devils in jars with the forced help of Sister Helley's Hell Maiden abilities. After Kat Elliot steals his demonic teddy bear from Helley, Manberg correctly guesses her to be a Hell Maiden wanting to use it to invoke demons, and when Helley brings her to him for help, Manberg aids in doing a blood bind between them to cut Kat's vow to her demons, give her control over her precognitive powers, and make her face the memories of her parents' deaths. Later giving the father of demons Buffalo Belzer all of his children back, Manberg then helps the heroes in fending off the demolition of the town.
Moral Event Horizon: The Klaxons show right off the bat that they'll stop at nothing to get what they want, not even murder. But when their own daughter stands up to them, they have absolutely no problem with the idea of bulldozing over her along with everyone else, which takes a special sort of depravity. The moment the law catches up to them, Irmgard tries to strangle Lane with her cuffs in the back of the police car.
Narm Charm: Kat fighting off her inner demon by literally hitting herself should simply not work, but the framing of the the scene with the monster projected on the wall makes it harder to notice as the fight goes on. And ultimately, she has to accept it rather than defeat it.
Older Than They Think: While some people might be shocked that Henry Selick would make an animated film not for kids, many of his fans would know this isn't his first time doing this. His first PG-13 film would be 2001's Monkeybone starring Brendan Fraser but due to its more over the top adult humor, it wasn't successful and would take Selick eight years to make another film and twenty-two years to make another PG-13 film again.
Squick:
- Buffalo Belzar is so massive he himself is the location of his Amusement Park of Doom. Attendees (disembodied spirits, thankfully) are swallowed whole and get a trip through his guts before being farted out and strapped into the rides. His sons are forced to live in his nose and make dummies of themselves out of his snot to sneak away. Even the ticks in his hair are the size of rats. Fat ones.
- It's mostly played for laughs but coming back from the dead is not pretty. The first thing Father Best does upon coming back from drowning is vomit a geyser of water.
- The maggots crawling around inside the undead colonel's mouth and eyes.
Stoic Woobie: Kat. Her life after her parents died was one challenge after another. After being sent to an abusive foster home she was bullied by other children, causing her to lash out in self-defense. She pushed a bully down the stairs, and it’s implied he didn’t survive (or was at least severely injured). She was then sent to a juvenile detention center where she spent years until she was sent back to Rust Bank at age 13. She protected herself by putting up a tough exterior and pushing everyone away, believing that anyone who gets close to her dies.
Toy Ship: Like Coraline and Wyborne before them, it took about two seconds for parts of the fandom to start shipping Kat and Raul, even though they're very young teens and the film doesn't confirm they're more than friends.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Natalia and the rest of the town council have spent years serving in a Mayor of a Ghost Town role while thwarting the Klaxons and having some kind of skills that have kept the Klaxons from simply assassinating them (with Natalia also investigating the Klaxons and being the mother of their daughter's ex-best friend), but they only have a few minutes of combined screentime, little of which shows them at their most interesting.
Uncertain Audience: Though the film is PG-13 and tackles its harsh subjects more directly than Selick's previous stop motion films, the final act of the feels a lot softer, coming off like a family friendly 'save the town from greedy businessmen' kids film, complete with zombies fending off the demolition crew with snowballs.

YMMV / Wendell & Wild

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