“Wendell & Wild” has a gently insane macabre kick.
It’s the new stop-motion fairy tale from director Henry Selick, who in the 30 years since “The Nightmare Before Christmas” has made just four features — “Coraline,” “Monkeybone,” “James and the Giant Peach” and now this one.
Selick’s movies have the logic of dollhouse dreams, the handmade elegance of slapstick surrealist puppet shows, and the rollicking Guignol spirit of monster comedies for 10-year-olds.Selick co-wrote “Wendell & Wild” with Jordan Peele, who is one of its voice-actor costars, and the movie is a casually unfolding parade of unabashed horror-camp nuttiness, starting with the amusement park in its early scenes, a carnival of the damned where black-and-white Picasso cutouts crash on roller-coasters and the whole damn fairground turns out to be perched on the belly of Buffalo Belzer (voiced by Ving Rhames), a kind of George Clinton meets P.T.
Barnum meets the devil figure whose two sons,
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