The Wild Robot (2024) Universal/Sci-Fi-Adventure RT: 101 minutes Rated PG (action/peril, thematic elements) Director: Chris Sanders Screenplay: Chris Sanders Music: Kris Bowers Cinematography: Chris Stover Release date: September 27, 2024 (US) Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Boone Storm, Alexandra Novelle, Raphael Alejandro, Paul-Mikel Williams, Eddie Park, Dee Bradley Baker.
Rating: ****
Two of this year’s biggest hits, Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4, are computer-animated family films. They’re both good, but let’s face the truth. Both of them are cash-grab movies that did exactly what the makers intended. They made money, a lot of it. That’s all well and good, but where’s the heart and soul? Like most of today’s big studio releases, they left me with an empty feeling. I didn’t feel emotionally fulfilled like I did with The Wild Robot, a brand-new CA feature from Chris Sanders, the writer-director of How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods.
I’m going to go ahead and make a prediction followed by a wish. I predict The Wild Robot will be among the five titles nominated for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Oscars. My wish is for it to be the winner. It absolutely deserves it. It’s the very epitome of artistry. In an interview, Sanders described his approach to the animation as “a Monet painting in a Miyazaki forest”. He speaks the truth; it’s not the usual assembly-line CA we get from Pixar or Illumination. It’s rich and textured like paintings in a museum. It’s art in motion. The TLC put into every frame is palpable.
I guess you could call The Wild Robot a robot out of water story. Adapted from the acclaimed middle grade novel by Peter Brown, it tells the story of Roz (Nyong’o, A Quiet Place: Day One), a ROZZUM 7134 robot who finds herself stranded on an island inhabited entirely by wildlife. With no humans around to assign tasks, she learns to speak to the animals in their languages. They refuse to accept her and she’s all set to activate her communicator so her manufacturers can retrieve her. That’s when something happens.
Roz accidentally destroys a goose nest, killing the mother and all but one of the eggs. She goes into protective mode until the eggs hatches. The baby gosling, a runt she later names Brightbill (Connor, Heartstopper), imprints himself onto Roz as his mother. Such a thing isn’t exactly in her programming, especially the part about caring for a living being, but Roz accepts the challenge of raising a child. The biggest challenge will be teaching him to fly in time for winter migration.
It takes a village- or in this case, a forest- to raise a child. Roz gets help from a few friends like the mischievous fox Fink (Pascal, The Mandalorian), expert mother opossum Pinktail (O’Hara, Home Alone 1 & 2), grumpy grizzly bear Thorn (Hammill, the Star Wars movies) and falcon Thunderbolt (Rhames, the Mission: Impossible movies). Working together, they try to get young Brightbill ready for his first migration. He faces the additional hurdle of not being accepted by the other geese because he’s different. That tends to be the case when you’re raised by a mechanized mama.
There’s more to The Wild Robot, but I’ll leave it to you to discover it for yourself. You should absolutely take your kids to see it. It’s definitely worth the price of admission and concessions (kids love their popcorn, don’t they?). What’s more, the parents will love it just as much as their young. I’m not ashamed to admit it nearly brought me to tears at the end. It’s such a beautiful story. What’s even better is it doesn’t pander to kids by sugar-coating the realities of nature, especially when it comes to death, a natural part of the cycle of life. Every living thing eventually dies and it’s always sad. In addition, the threat of dying is a very real one for runts who typically don’t survive in the wild. It makes Roz’s job all the harder.
There’s also a great sci-fi adventure in The Wild Robot. In the third act, Roz’s makers come to take her home and it isn’t exactly a pleasant encounter. The creators, represented by corporate drone Vontra (Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once), want to completely wipe her memory which would also erase all the emotional knowledge she gained. It’s nice how all the animals band together and fight for her against an army of unfriendly robots. It’s a rather bleak view of the future, one in which technology has replaced the beauty of nature, but it doesn’t weigh things down.
The voice talents, Nyong’o in particular, do a marvelous job in The Wild Robot. She brings nuance to what easily could have been a cold, emotionless voice job. Pascal has fun as the foxy fox whose sarcastic attitude is a defense mechanism for the loneliness he feels. Bill Nighy (Love Actually) is terrific as an elder goose who offers up words of wisdom to Roz and Brightbill. Connor is great as Brightbill, a young goose experiencing the same growing pains as his human counterparts- i.e. the pain of not fitting in, the feeling of betrayal upon learning the truth about his background. Hammill is perfect as the grouchy grizzly.
There’s a lot of love about The Wild Robot. It reminds me of The Iron Giant (1999), a splendid animated movie (hand-drawn) that didn’t find its audience until later. I hope that’s not the case with The Wild Robot. It deserves to be a big hit and it just might be. According to Wikipedia, it grossed $11.3M opening day. That’s pretty good. Here’s to it becoming a new animated classic.
