For a brief period in the early 2010s, it looked as if mainstream feature animation might enter a stop-motion renaissance. The painstaking process, where the illusion of movement is created via frame-by-frame adjustments of physical elements (often puppet figures) rather than drawings, for years produced only the occasional feature films released to U.S. theaters. But 2012 saw no fewer than three theatrical features in the format: Aardman Animation’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits; Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie; and the Laika studio’s second feature ParaNorman. At the same time, Wes Anderson’s acclaimed 2009 film Fantastic Mr. Fox was still fresh in mind, and the director would soon begin production on his stop-motion follow-up Isle of Dogs. But by the time a Guillermo del Toro version of Pinocchio became the second stop-motion film to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2023, Laika hadn’t released a movie in four years, Burton and Anderson had moved on, and Aardman was mostly making sequels to its earlier hits for Netflix.

Is there something about the technical, frame-by-frame meticulousness of stop-motion that courts bigger-picture miracles, ensuring their survival? It’s a format that seems perpetually endangered, and persistently revived by sheer love for the form. After all, you don’t spend years making minute adjustments to puppets, commissioning them detailed knitwear and syncing their little mouths with dialogue, for any other reason; the room for financial upside is relatively low. Even for an outfit as dedicated as Laika, the stop-motion studio run by Nike scion Travis Knight — his father essentially bought it for him as a vanity project — the new movie Wildwood feels like a particularly bespoke gauntlet thrown down in front of its tireless animators. At over two hours, this fantasy-adventure adapted from Colin Meloy’s fantasy novel is the longest stop-motion feature ever produced, with a vast series of woodsy environments and an ensemble cast far exceeding those of Coraline or Missing Link. (Generally, a bigger cast shouldn’t make animated movies cost way more; stop-motion has found an exception to this rule.) It cost an estimated $100 million to make, and was in development for a full decade before production was announced in 2021. Now, five years later, it’s finally in theaters.

It can be difficult to describe the undertaking of a stop-motion feature without sounding as if the audience should be, first and foremost, guilted into seeing it. Look at all the time and money spent on this movie! They did this for you! Don’t you care?! So it’s important to note that on a moment-by-moment basis, Wildwood is terrific entertainment. Given Knight’s live-action history directing movies about Transformers and the Masters of the Universe, it would be easy to flinch at the vaguely 1980s set-up: Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is left in charge of her baby brother, bringing him on a daylong jaunt through Portland even though her parents warn her to keep him inside, whereupon he is taken away by an enormous flock of crows. Prue and her not-exactly-friend Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) then venture into the “impassable forest” outside of Portland to retrieve the baby on their own. Essentially, it’s two decidedly different set-ups from 40 years ago, fused together, the fantasy mission of Labyrinth meets the coming-of-age journey of Stand By Me.

But for better or worse, Wildwood doesn’t closely resemble either of those movies once it gets going, though the episodic nature of its midsection, where Prue and Curtis are separated and meet all manner of characters, man and beast alike, does continue to occasionally recall Labyrinth as well as The Wizard of Oz – the vaster books moreso than the streamlined classic film. We learn backstory about the Dowager Governess (Carey Mulligan) and her bottomless grief over a terrible loss; we also meet an unforgiving coyote army, a group of vilified bandits, a morally crooked governor, a physically crooked rat (Awkwafina), and a bunch of animals wearing adorable little hats. Eventually, Prue figures out who has her brother and why, and must summon her adolescent courage to retrieve him. There are also plenty of chases and soaring flocks of birds.

On a purely narrative level, it would probably be easy enough to lift out some segments of the movie, but despite an 130-minute runtime, Wildwood never feels especially self-indulgent. Almost the opposite; the amount of visual invention on full display feels like an act of generosity toward an audience starved for truly cinematic imagery. $100 million is a lot of money for a stop-motion animated feature, yet it’s also far less than what’s often spent on developing CG cartoons, or would-be blockbusters like Knight’s Masters of the Universe. And yet Wildwood is so much better-looking than the norm for either of those categories, not just in its sights but its motions, more fluid than older stop-motion pictures but with just enough human judder to distinguish it from the smoothness of standard computer animation. Laika’s little creations (augmented by visual effects, but still largely handcrafted) really breathe.

Despite its splendor, Wildwood is often thrillingly disengaged with its own commercial prospects; a movie custom-tuned for maximum family-friendly engagement would probably not open with a flashback where a mechanical child commits suicide, and probably not end with an extended battle sequence where bloodshed far outweighs any momentary comic relief. Knight’s willingness to not just run into PG-13 territory but push its limits, while still populating the frame with hat-wearing animals and a wisecracking Awkwafina character, recalls the work of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese hand-drawn animation studio that essentially serves as a global gold standard for all-ages (or at least most-ages) movies that aren’t insulting to any segment of the audience.

Emotionally, Wildwood doesn’t quite hit those Ghibli highs, nor those of Pixar, the Disney subsidiary to which Laika is often compared in terms of its excellent track record. Prue’s evolution is more subtle; she doesn’t lose her little brother from neglect and in fact obviously loves him deeply from the jump (there’s no Labyrinth-style teenage hissy fit in the offing), which makes her an extremely likable and plucky heroine without much of the emotional volatility often associated with coming-of-age stories. Yet if Wildwood feels more sincerely interested in building out its hidden worlds than constructing metaphors, that’s also something of a relief from the prescriptive, theme-first rewriting that dominates so much contemporary American animation. Despite the obvious level of planning that went into this stop-motion mega-production, it doesn’t feel like it exists in order to impart a clear or affirming message. For a movie of meticulous craft, it grows wild and free.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.