4.8 out of 5.0 stars
“The Wild Robot”, released on Sept. 27, is a stunning and beautifully woven animated family film that spins a colorful web of plotlines and messages about the nature of life, love and family. Directed by Chris Sanders — the notable co-director of “Lilo & Stitch” and “How to Train Your Dragon” — the newest in Dreamworks’s film lineup, “The Wild Robot,” holds a special place among the top of both of these catalogs. It stars Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor and Mark Hamill, but each voice actor blends into their role perfectly and the film does not rely on its star-studded cast. “The Wild Robot” is a true classic of modern animation; a diamond in the rough of an intellectual-property-dominated industry. It is wonderful within the realm of character, plot and message, but shines exponentially brighter than most in terms of visuals.
Despite the fact that all the characters are wild animals and a seemingly unfeeling robot, “The Wild Robot” crafts them all with a certain uniqueness and authenticity. The integral wild robot, named Roz (Nyong’o), undergoes an impressively uplifting arc focused around her journey to humanism and motherhood. She is a potent force with clear objectives who receives a very natural change throughout the course of the story. Roz is obligated to take care of a baby gosling that encapsulates her journey. She serves as a very unique protagonist for a family film, being propped into the position of a mother and forced to learn the job’s intricacies — in this way, “The Wild Robot” is outstanding as a movie that can be relatable to the entire family. The emotional core of the film shifts depending on who’s watching.
The supporting characters all hold a certain amount of depth and go on arcs of their own as well. The fox, Fink (Pascal), undergoes a transformation out of his deceptive nature and the goose, Brightbil (Connor), grows through the background of a precise coming-of-age-narrative. The other animals in the forest provide a huge amount of comedy throughout the film. The slapstick style of other Dreamworks pieces like “Puss and Boots: The Last Wish” come through in droves throughout the first act. The comedy elements also take a dive into darker humor at points, showing that the team behind “The Wild Robot” was not scared to dig into uncommon tactics in the domain of children’s entertainment.
In many ways, “The Wild Robot” is a story with several very classic life lessons to teach, not just one overarching point. It delves into lessons about interconnectedness, found family versus biological family, overcoming misfortune, dealing with disability and saying goodbye. The theme of love is present within every word of every character; it surrounds and enwraps “The Wild Robot” in a way that many other stories do not provide.
The plot of “The Wild Robot,” however, is a bit tropey in some areas. Although many directions the story takes are unexpected, some elements and plotlines have been done before within similar movies, such as Brightbill’s arc encapsulating a less potent version of Hiccup’s in “How to Train Your Dragon.” But these small bits of sameness that exist in “The Wild Robot” are washed away by the overwhelming coat of genuineness and authenticity that the writing provides. “The Wild Robot” is a story with the heart and soul of humanity, enriched by atmosphere and experience, something that has not been rendered extensively in this modern industry.
Lastly, and the most undeniably breathtaking part of “The Wild Robot,” is its animation and visuals. This film is, without a doubt, an easy nominee and potential winner for the best animated film of the year at the Oscars. A large amount of that weight is carried by the film’s outstanding, miraculous and awe-inspiring visual imagery. The images of the wilderness throughout each season, the backgrounds and tone, all add so much beauty to the experience. “The Wild Robot” represents an expansion on the style set by “Spider Man: Into the Spiderverse” back in 2018. It overcomes that style and pushes far past it, in some ways even surpassing 2023’s “Spider Man: Across the Spider-verse” and very easily marking itself as one of the best-looking movies ever made. “The Wild Robot” is pure, unfiltered art in every frame.
Overall, “The Wild Robot” is a modern classic in every way. It represents the rare notion that original films can and are great, even if their box office presence is not as explosive as IP driven content. “The Wild Robot” was based off of a modern book series of the same name by Peter Brown, but that does not size up to the average built-in audience of many other films coming out this year. If anything, this movie should be a wake-up call for studios to reinvent, take risks and try for all purposes to create a human film.
