Reviews WesternAnimation / Over The Garden Wall

The Best Musical Halloween Family Picture Ever Unjustly Chopped Up Into Ten Pieces

I enjoyed this story a lot more than I thought I would. The world of the Unknown is not annoying and "random," but genuinely captures the same sense of mystery and whimsy as a good folk tale. The characters, despite seeming stock and flat on the surface, have surprising amounts of depth and nuance. Wirt is believably flawed, Greg is just the right mixture of annoying, innocent, and cute, both grow and develop as the story goes on, and the various side characters are all used juuuust right, with none of them overstaying their welcome.

The plot, despite being largely concentrated into the second half of the story, is there, and it forms a nice capstone to the "road trip" story of the first portion. And the beautiful art and animation pays homage to every piece of American folk art since the Revolution, including a great interlude set in an old turn-of-the-century cartoon.

The thematic elements are rich and deep, but well-articulated enough for audiences young and old to understand and appreciate them. And while the scares were pretty scary, all of them serve what G. K. Chesterton once told us was the point of fairy tales; not that there are scary monsters in the world, but that if one is clever and brave that monsters can be beaten.

It does have one flaw, and I'll just say it: this "miniseries" would've worked better as a slow-burn-paced film. As a series, it can run into problems of pacing and focus, but by welding each segment together into a roughly feature-length film they are largely overcome. If you haven't already, give it a try, and think of it as a single movie rather than a miniseries.