While watching the new animated fantasy film “Wildwood,” whenever you start to think about what is working well and what, perhaps, isn’t, you remind yourself of what went into making it.

As it is the latest effort by Oregon-based studio Laika, “Wildwood” is no typical slice of animation. Laika specializes — as it has since 2009’s beloved “Coraline” — in stop-motion animation projects. For those of us not in the field, it’s hard to comprehend the dedication — and patience — required to make even a short stop-motion film by taking what must be a near-countless number of individual shots of largely hand-created miniatures, arranged and adjusted meticulously throughout the process.

An adaptation of the fantasy novel of the same name by Colin Meloy, the lead singer of the band the Decemberists, with illustrations by his wife, Carson Ellis, “Wildwood” is, at more than two hours, too long, AND it is unquestionably overstuffed with characters. But wow — the labor that went into committing those two entirely common sins must have been ENORMOUS.

The film’s director, Travis Knight, who’s also Laika’s president and CEO, has called “Wildwood” the company’s most ambitious project, with production designer Nelson Lowry telling The World of Interiors “it’s about double the size” of 2016’s critically adored “Kubo and the Two Strings,” with more than 130 “unique locations.”

The company has been developing it since roughly the book’s release in 2011, and that’s how it feels — a grand endeavor that was anything but rushed.

We first meet a woman named Alexandra (voiced by Carey Mulligan, “Maestro”), whom we will come to know as the problematic Dowager Governess and who, on this day in the past, is suffering the painful echo of a devastating tragedy. However, the central figure of “Wildwood” is our heroine, headstrong teenager Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee, “Doogie Kameāloha, M.D.”).

Prue chides her dad (Jake Johnson, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”) for filling the head of her young brother, Mac (Arthur Knight, son of Travis), with terrifying tales of magic hidden in the woods not far from their home in Portland, Oregon — “dark forests,” he says, “where the trees hide darker secrets.”

And, of course, when Mr. McKeel instructs Prue that she is not to take Mac outside the house during a fast-approaching babysitting assignment — he is quite insistent about this, the reason becoming painstakingly clear deeper into “Wildwood” — she immediately puts him into a wagon and tows him with her bike as she jaunts around town.

At a coffee shop, she encounters nerdy classmate Curtis (Jacob Tremblay, “Wonder”), who appears to have a crush on her and latches on as she takes Mac to a playground. There, the boy is snatched by a murder of crows, which fly him toward the woods. (Should have listened to Dad, Prue.)

Prue and Curtis chase after Mac, quickly finding themselves in the frightening woods and, soon enough, separated, leading to parallel adventures for each of them. Curtis makes the acquaintance of Alexandra, who acts welcoming while battling a delusion that the boy is someone from her past. Prue, meanwhile, encounters a range of people and creatures, some more friendly and helpful than others, as she works her way toward an eventual confrontation with Alexandra, who is in possession of Mac and has designs on using the child as a means to villainous ends.

That confrontation takes place during a large-scale field battle, something akin to a big-budget sequence from “House of the Dragon,” complete with soaring birds and catapults flinging spiked metal orbs that have been set ablaze.

In the vast ocean between the inciting incident and this mighty climax is a whole lot — we’d argue too much. For instance, here are some — but by no means all — of the characters we’ve not yet mentioned: The General (Angela Bassett, “Black Panther”), a large bird who leads the Avian Principality and assists Prue; Brendan (Mahershala Ali, “Moonlight”), aka The Bandit King, a well-intentioned thief who commands a ragtag but proud force; Septima (Awkwafina, “Raya and the Last Dragon”), a rat who befriends Curtis while he is Alexandra’s guest; Maksim, a coyote and military officer loyal to Alexandra who is voiced, unmistakably, by legendary singer-songwriter Tom Waits; Dmitri (Charlie Day, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”), a not-so-fierce soldier under Maksim’s command; Owl Rex (Richard E. Grant, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”), another large-winged being who attempts to help Prue; and Niamh (Amandla Stenberg, “The Acolyte”), a fierce warrior who wants the best for Wildwood.

The son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, Travis Knight directs from a screenplay by Chris Butler, whose writing credits include several Laika films as well as this year’s “Masters of the Universe.” On the one hand, you feel as if the two of them should have crammed less into “Wildwood,” but on the other, what’s wrong with giving folks their money’s worth?

While the film seems at least a bit long for young children, its content earned it a PG-13 rating, so it probably isn’t for them anyway. You can imagine viewers in their early teens taking to this the way those their age did years ago to J.K. Rowling’s later, higher-stakes “Harry Potter” stories.

For the rest of us, who know all the fantasy tropes, we’re mainly left to admire the incredibly detailed view — and all the work that went into creating it.

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‘WILDWOOD’

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language)

Running time: 2:11

How to watch: In theaters Oct. 23

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