Movie Review – Wild Robot, The
Principal Cast : Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames.
Synopsis: After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island’s animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.
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Any film that makes me cry tears of happiness is a film I have no issue recommending. The Wild Robot is just such a film: it’s a wonderful, joyous example of a simple story told with breathtaking ease, complex and gorgeous animation, and tremendous voice work from the top-tier cast. Yes, I had tears more than once, although before you think me soft or too in touch with my feelings there’s a genuine sense of emotional heft inside this movie’s “it’s for kids” tonality. In a similar vein to Dreamworks other recent efforts, such as Puss In Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys, the animation style in The Wild Robot is unique and exceptionally cool, a subtle blend of dynamic realism and artistic expressionism, rooted in believable characters and a world both familiar and altogether alien to our eyes. The futuristic isolation that forms the core premise of the film’s plot echoes not just Pixar’s Wall-E but Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away and even The Martian, with Lupita Nyong’o’s Apple-adjacent task robot Roz personifying those films’ humanist core equally as well.
The story centres on Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), a robot who is stranded on a remote island after the cargo ship transporting her malfunctions. Upon waking, Roz must learn to survive in the wilderness, despite having no knowledge of the natural world. As she navigates the rugged terrain, Roz encounters a variety of wild animals, many of whom are initially fearful or distrustful of her. Over time, Roz begins to adapt, forging friendships with the island’s creatures, including Brightbill (Kit Connor), a gosling she adopts after its family is tragically lost. She also befriends cheeky, voracious fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal), and the pair of them raise Brightbill as he grows up to migrate away from the island along with the rest of the geese. As Roz learns to coexist with the wildlife, she discovers more about her origins and the true purpose for which she was built. However, when the peaceful life she’s built is threatened by forces from the outside world looking to reclaim her, Roz must make difficult choices to protect her new home and family.
The film is an adaptation of a 2016 novel by Peter Brown, and examines all manner of aspects of life on this planet including death, abandonment, what it means to have family and connections, and community. It’s skilfully and subtly handled, from the inadvertent death of Brightbill’s mother on the nest, to the continual referencing of it, to eventually the assumption that the island animals will eventually all hunt and eat each other, told with grace and nuance by director Chris Sanders (who also adapted the screenplay) and his team of animators. Animation tropes are evident throughout – the local bullies, the violent rogue bear living in his cave, the sly fox always flirting with eating his young ward, and the cavalcade of cutesy island co-tenants who all provide a wide ensemble for this growth journey to balance out. Yet in spite of being filled with classic animation adornments, The Wild Robot somehow seems fresh and new, I think mainly because the focus of the film is a character who is inherently inhuman, a childlike robot in Roz that demands growth and exploration as a role within the natural order.
A lot of the credit for the film’s magnificence can be laid at the feet of the voice cast, and in particular the combination of Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal. Pascal’s rascally tones perfectly capture the free-spirit nature of Fink’s mischievous antics – I can’t help but be drawn back to a similar turn by Jason Bateman’s work in Zootopia – and Nyong’o is a revelation as a robotic motherly figure who learns what it means to be… essentially, human. Kit Connor’s youthful yet profound voice work as Brightbill is the catalyst for a couple of moments of weeping (for me, at least), as his relationship with Roz solidifies throughout the movie. At one point, just when you think the film’s reached its natural conclusion, you look up and see there’s still a half hour to go and boy, does that final act pack a wallop of hell-yeah fist pumps and even more tears. Genuine connections between a viewer and a movie can often be few and far between – particularly, I think, for those of us who watch a lot of films for work or as a hobby – but The Wild Robot absolutely captured my heart in a way I wasn’t expecting.
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