A Beautiful Walk

One of the movies competing for this year's Best Animated Feature Oscar can be streamed free on Apple TV+, if you have it. Wolfwalkers is the third film in a loose trilogy inspired by Irish folklore, following The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea -- though it's the first that I've watched myself.

A young girl named Robyn lives with her father in an Irish village in the mid-1600s. It's run by a tyrannical Lord Protector, and menaced by dangerous wolves in the nearby forest, who legend says may be influenced by "wolfwalkers," humans able to take wolf form.

I didn't find the plot here particularly compelling. While this story is drawing on a legend with which I'm not familiar, it still deals with a lot of formulaic and familiar plot elements. The pacing is strange too, with a lot of events happening simply "because it's time for the next thing," and not feeling particularly motivated by anything that's come before.

The voice cast is fair enough, but also not a huge draw to the movie, I think. Robyn is a quite trying main character at times, one of those "always makes exactly the wrong decision" types of protagonist, and it's asking a lot for a young actor to make her sympathetic in a voice-only performance. Honor Kneafsey does her best, as does Eva Whittaker as her friend Mebh, but the script isn't exactly helping them. Fans of Sean Bean may enjoy his presence here. Maria Doyle Kennedy is a performer I've liked through The Tudors and Orphan Black, but her role isn't especially showy or demanding. Simon McBurney gives good villain as the Lord Protector, but again -- he isn't the reason to watch the film.

What is the reason, then? The animation. This film strikes its own visual path that's not quite like anything else. It's definitely not Disney or Pixar. It seems more inspired by Japanese anime, but at most only as a jumping off point to arrive at a style very much its own. There are moments when it seems to deliberately be left unpolished, but even then, it's quite beautiful and striking throughout. Now even in animation, strong visuals alone are not enough for me to love a movie -- but I did feel that what I saw here was strong enough that I had to bring it to the attention of my film-loving and/or artist friends.

For me, Wolfwalkers was only about a C in whole. I found the story a little too dry. But I believe many of my readers would absolutely love to watch it, so I hope I can nudge those people in the right direction here.