One chaotic morning, as his mother struggles to concentrate on a work call and his father fumbles breakfast, that Angelo (voiced by Dario Hardouin Spurio), a rowdy young boy with a pronounced rectangular-shaped head and an even bigger imagination, learns his grandmother (Yolande Moreau) has fallen ill with a slim chance of recovery. The life-changing news propels the innocuous French animated feature “Into the Wonderwoods,” which Oscar-nominated artist and filmmaker Vincent Paronnaud (“Persepolis”) adapted from his own 2016 comic book (published under the nom de plume Winshluss) and co-directed with Alexis Ducord (“Zombillenium”).
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The mature nature of the inciting incident feels reminiscent of the heart-rending Swiss stop-motion gem “My Life as a Zucchini,” but soon “Wonderwoods” arrives at a familiar, if still charming, place that’s more squarely family-friendly than tonally audacious. To see Grandma before it’s too late, the family travels by car — Angelo has a pair of siblings, one older and the other an infant — but during a pit stop, the protagonist wanders off and his parents get back on the road without him. Left behind, Angelo ventures into a wooded area beckoned by a shiny entity. He’ll need to make some new pals to get back on the right path.
One head-scratching detail is that while the clan’s car features an advanced AI assistant, whose human-like head appears on the dashboard as a floating hologram, Angelo doesn’t have a cell phone or any other device. It’s a strategic decision on Paronnaud’s part, since the mishap could otherwise be resolved with a quick call. However, it wouldn’t seem far-fetched for an American child of his same age to have a tablet or mobile phone at their disposal. The narrative choice might respond to the fact that the French government banned the use of cell phones in schools back in 2018. Perhaps Angelo’s parents have even stricter rules on technology — after all, the rascal’s father does express an aversion to AI throughout.
The kooky, fantastical creatures Angelo meets in this whimsical forest rival the extensive cast of characters that populate classic tales such as “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Wizard of Oz” in sheer numbers. A musically talented but pessimistic frog, a squirrel who wishes to be a bird, a cloud trying to manage its propensity for angry outburst, an ogre working as a real estate agent and some ferocious ants are among the many quirky friends introduced but not fleshed out into more substantial figures. Of all these supporting players, Goouh, a giant mound made of soil and vegetation who communicates in grunts not entirely unlike Marvel’s Groot, is both most relevant to Angelo’s quest and an impressive technical feat given its texture and the shape-shifting attributes of its amorphous composition.
Making make the whole affair even more convoluted, the vain antagonist, Ultra (José Garcia), a pale male in metallic armor, plans to destroy the forest to find a legendary spring whose water is believed to grant eternal life. His army of one-eyed robots do his bidding while also performing musical numbers to feed his fragile ego.
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This villain’s personality and antics, and the film’s overall arc to save the forest and get Angelo to his grandmother, render “Into the Wonderwoods” overly familiar even as the filmmakers attempt to distinguish themselves from other similar stories (about a child entering a magical place with fairytale rules and residents) told in the same medium. Yet, for all its not-so-unique characteristics, the character design and aesthetic choices that aim to preserve some of the graphic quality of the source material don’t register as generic, as it’s the case with plenty of computer-animated projects from around the world that often seem interchangeable. “Wonderwoods” exhibits top-notch craftsmanship in the visual effects department, the intricacy of the backgrounds and in the character animation of the action-packed scenes near the end. The result looks and sounds as technically accomplished as one would expect from a project involving veterans in animation and printed cartoons.
The fanciful scenarios in Angelo’s boundless mind — as well as all other digressions that take us into the thoughts or memory of one of the characters — are conceived in 2D animation and sport and a look closer to that of a comic strip. In these sequences, the young hero sees himself as a fearless, muscly adult facing grand adventures. Paronnaud and Ducord follow the same visual pattern as other recent majority-computer-animated projects, where the use of the hand-drawn technique is reserved for those sections that represent a different plane of reality, an ancient myth or a past event being recalled.
The sum of all these components results in a film that’s delightful to look at, though not as compelling narratively. It functions as a serviceable piece of children’s entertainment, but doesn’t have that extra layer of emotional complexity that can turn such kid-focused productions into insightful works of art that adults can also be affected by.
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