It’s been a great year for animated robots, first with Robot Dreams this past summer, and now Chris Sanders’s film adaptation of the popular children’s book The Wild Robot. The strong word-of-mouth has made this an under-the-radar box office hit, and deservedly so. Sanders (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods) has already proved that he’s one of the best American animated filmmakers working today, and he’s solidified that position with his latest entry (How to Train Your Gosling?).
Sanders has always had a gift for and interest in animals and human-animal relationships in his films, and here he takes that one step further and forays into the semi sci-fi world of robots, but set in the natural wilderness. What ensues is a bionic fish-out-water story that we haven’t really seen on this scale since The Iron Giant – a lofty but worthwhile comparison. The main character, ROZZUM Unit 7134 – later nicknamed Roz and voiced by the brilliant Lupita Nyong’o – crash lands on an island uninhabited by humans. Roz shares some similarities to Baymax, but her evolution is much more profound. The first act is relatively straightforward and wordless, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching a Pixar film.
As Roz tries and fails to find animals to whom she can provide her helpful and high-tech services, she comes across a baby goose she names Brightbill (Kit Connor) and makes it her mission to help it survive, with the help of a sly fox (an underrated Pedro Pascal). It’s a beautiful mother-son story and a moving found family movie, with the strong support of an ensemble and star-studded animal cast (including Mark Hamill, Ving Rhames, Catherin O’Hara, Bill Nighy, and Stephanie Hsu, to name a few).
Appropriately enough, the writing is clear and concise enough for children to follow and thematically complex enough for adults to appreciate. The Wild Robot is a throwback in the sense that it is a kids’ movie for kids, rather than being chock full of adult jokes and winks at the audience (a formula that was first perfect by Shrek and since then been less successfully beaten to death), while being told with such sincerity and warmth that it transcends the genre of a kids film to just be an animated film for the ages.
Kris Bowers’ rousing score is phenomenal in reflecting each of the beats of the story and the full range of emotions that it conveys, and the soundtrack has a couple of boppers that you sense will be an instant classic just like the film itself. It feels like you are soaring when the film is supposed to be uplifting, and it’s heart-pounding and exciting during the training montage/action scenes, and you may even shed a tear or two as you get increasingly invested in the characters’ emotional journey.
That journey is reflected in every single detail. Nyong’o voices Roz as a robot in her speech patterns and vocal inflections, but that slowly becomes more human over time and she becomes ingratiated with the animals and nature around her. The film is visually breathtaking as well, using a groundbreaking method of combining hand-drawn animation with CGI in a “painted animation” style recently developed by DreamWorks. Over time, as Roz blends in more with her surroundings, the way she is drawn goes from more CGI to the softer, more painterly quality and texture of the animals around her as well.
Sanders says that there are two lessons from the original book that he wanted to maintain as core themes of the film. First, kindness is a survival skill. Second, we sometimes need to change our programming to survive. There’s also a reading of Roz and Brightbill as neurodivergent characters who process things differently than others around them, but the film argues that that is a strength rather than a flaw – a feature rather than a defect. Certainly it works at least as an analogy for kids and people that are differently abled or special needs, and discrimination in general. Even if you just enjoy it on a surface level, The Wild Robot is a touching tale about parenting, belonging, and the great feats that kindness can achieve. It is a new favorite and an instant classic.
Now playing in theatres.
