Wendell & Wild

Wendell & Wild follows Kat Elliot, a tough, orphaned teen haunted by her past and struggling with life at a Catholic boarding school. After a supernatural encounter, she strikes a deal with two mischievous demon brothers, Wendell and Wild, who are trapped in the underworld and desperate for freedom. Promising to help Kat resurrect her parents, the demons rope her into a wild scheme involving a magical hair cream and a bizarre amusement park plot orchestrated by a shady entrepreneur.

Wendell & Wild Review

Lifeless performances and an anemic script mar a story already compromised by misplaced activism masquerading as a narrative. Wendell & Wild is representative of everything wrong with current-day Netflix.

                   

PARENTAL NOTES

PG-13, My Butt

• Normally, we wouldn’t include a PG-13 show in our Pint-Sized Reviews, as they tend to be created for and targeting either teens or adults. However, despite its rating, Wendell & Wild’s immature humor and whimsical design are clearly intended for younger audiences, particularly those with terrible parents or parents who haven’t yet discovered us.
  • The following is an extensive list of infractions that don’t necessarily exceed a PG-13 rating but are certainly questionable for a program meant for children.

Murder, Death, Kill

• The opening scene shows a family driving off a bridge into the water, and while the child survives, we watch the mother and father sink and die.
  • We revisit this in multiple flashbacks and dreams.
• Multiple characters throughout, including the 13-year-old lead, threaten various others with murder, saying things like “I’m going to kill you.” However, for at least the 13-year-old child, it’s not an idle threat but a declaration of intent delivered in anger.
• A Catholic priest gets brutally murdered just off-screen. We see the shadow of him being bashed in the head with a golf club, and then his nearly lifeless body is dumped in an icy pond while expelling the bubbles of the air remaining in his lungs.
• In a flashback, we watch the lead child accidentally kill another child by pushing him down the stairs.
• A nun falls and hits her head, and blood begins to pool around her.
• The children fake their deaths by staging a faux-blood-covered murder scene.

Beelzebuddy

• Demons and even Satan (though not by name) are infantilized and turned into little more than devious goofs.
  • The Satan character spends most of the movie wearing an S&M harness with an evil amusement park covering his crotch while he lies in a hot tub-esque natural pool.
  • His sons, voiced by Key & Peele, are idiots whose sole goal in life is to build a fun amusement park that will make Hell as much fun, or more, than Heaven.
• Early in the show, we are treated to a scene of screaming human souls being delivered to and then tortured in Hell (again, not called that by name).
  • The torture begins when the Satan character eats the souls.
    • They travel through his digestive system and then are excreted into an amusement park of horrors.
  • Electrocution
  • Scalded in boiling water
  • General torture
• In one scene, a child performs an occult ritual to release demons from Hell that includes speaking Latin with a possessed teddy bear. The purpose of releasing the demons is to make a pact with them, trading her servitude for favors.
• The demons dig up and reanimate multiple corpses. At least one has creepy crawlers crawling over and through it, including its empty eye sockets and mouth.

This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on Drugs. Looks Fun, Right?

• Wendell and Wild intentionally achieve a psychedelic high and trip numerous times by ingesting a paste that they stole from their father.
• While no characters drink beer in the movie, the parents of the main character do/did own a brewery that was mentioned frequently and is pivotal to the plot.
  • The movie opens with the mom and dad talking about beer. Again, even though it is rated PG-13, it is intended for children.

Words Words Words

• There are several instances of curse words being said by adults and children, though the Lord’s name is never taken in vain.
  • The lead character and one other are referred to as Hellmaidens multiple times.
  • Hell – 2 or 3 times.
  • Damn – 2 or 3 times.
  • @$$ – 2 or 3 times.

WOKE REPORT

White DEIvil

• We on the right often complain that diversity is artificially forced into existing IPs and wish those on the left who worship melanin would just create something original. At first glance, it may seem hypocritical to complain that this show’s diversity ratio is excessive. However, as they decided not only to nearly completely omit white characters, with most appearing only once or twice in the background shots of large crowds, but also to ensure that the few white characters with any lines were creepy or otherwise portrayed negatively, it bears mentioning.
  • There are three nuns in the program. Two are old and frightening-looking white women who are so ancient that their speech is barely intelligible due to age. The other is a strong and much younger black woman. She is brave and a key character, while the two white ones are mostly used as jokes.

Bad Religion

• Most of the action takes place in or around a private Catholic school for girls.
  • So, of course, the priest in charge is a corrupt goober who is murdered, and returns as an even more corrupt undead creature.
    • He ends up being in league with the demons who resurrected him.
    • He conspires to have some characters murdered and gives them a menacing blessing as he prepares to watch them die.
  • The nun who helps the lead character joins her in the “Redemption Chamber” to assist in exorcising the power that has been attempting to take over her. Instead of invoking the power of God, the nun encourages the young girl to tap into her own inner power and seek forgiveness from within. That she is wearing a massive and highly visible cross during this scene makes it even more egregious.
• The demons are made to be silly and selfish rather than pure evil.
  • Even their dad, who is basically the Devil, mends his ways by the show’s end, realizing that he’s been too harsh on his sons and promising to be more thoughtful.

Modern Parenting

• Before the parents die, Kat, their daughter, is getting ready to eat a candy apple. Her mom tells her no, and they stare at one another.

Bigly Villain

• The two primary villains are a husband and wife who are evil, wealthy developers. The husband is an overweight man with unusual, messy blonde hair, who always wears a suit with a large, red tie.

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Imagining The Big One

• A character with so little to do and so little importance to the plot that it’s hard not to assume that she was included for no other reason than to normalize mental illness in the minds and hearts of our children, Kat’s friend, Raul, mistakenly believes that dressing like a boy and shaving the sides of her head makes her a boy.
  • It’s never explicitly stated that Raul is actually a girl, but it isn’t left to the imagination either. We see a picture of her all dolled up and standing with the other pretty girls (who are maligned for being pretty and put together, even though they are only ever kind). Her mom has a random and completely narratively meaningless phone conversation in which she corrects the person on the other end, reminding him that she has a son and not a daughter.
    • It is also revealed that her name was Ramona.
    • She goes to an all-girls school
      • a Catholic school that allows this nonsense.
        • My kids go to a private Christian (though not Catholic) school, and they demand that girls dress like girls/boys like boys, accept the use of biologically accurate pronouns, and be referred to by their actual name.

Leftovers

• Rich people are portrayed as evil and driven solely by greed.
• Private prisons and corporate money are evil.
  • The school-to-prison pipeline is hinted at.
• The silly and much-maligned pretty girls say that they meditate for the environment every evening.
• The lead character is nasty and rude from the beginning to the end, but because she has green hair, a ton of facial piercings, and a bad attitude, the tone of the show is that she’s a tough and authentic individual who isn’t afraid to express herself.