Review: The Wild Robot

Dreamworks Animation finally out-Pixars Pixar.

Ever since Antz debuted a month before A Bug’s Life, Dreamworks Animation has tried to prove its movies can compete with the masterpieces from Pixar. While they’ve occasionally stumbled – hello, Shark Tale – they’ve managed to nip at the Mouse House’s heels at the box office, and movies like Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda have come close in terms of quality (and 99% of the time, they’re far better than the cacophonous Illumination films). 

But while they’ve been enjoyable, the films from Dreamworks usually trade in laughs more than feels, and even their best works don’t pack the emotional and thematic punch that Wall-E, Finding Nemo and Inside Out bring. 

Until now. With Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot, Dreamworks delivers its first bona fide masterpiece. Visually dazzling and breathtakingly creative, it’s a stunning achievement in animation – better even than this year’s smash hit Inside Out 2 – and should delight younger viewers while leaving their parents blubbering messes, just like the best family films. 

Based on the book by Peter Brown, The Wild Robot is about a helper robot named Rozzum, “Roz” for short, that’s marooned in the wilderness after a shipping catastrophe. Searching for an owner to give her a task (note: I get that Roz is a robot, but I’m just going to go with the “her” pronoun because I keep tripping over it), Roz tries to assist the wilderness creatures but, in the process, stumbles and accidentally lands on a goose nest, killing the mother and smashing all the eggs but one. Roz takes this egg into her care and unwittingly becomes a mother figure to the gosling, Brightbill. With the help of a fox who may or may not be entirely trustworthy, Roz attempts to teach Brightbill to stay alive and fly away by fall. 

It’s a simple premise, and yet The Wild Robot feels incredibly original from its first frames. Although computer-generated, the film avoids a hyper-realism as well as the exaggerated, cartoony and plastic look of other computer-animated films. Instead, the backgrounds look painted, pulled from a storybook. Sanders was the director of the last great hand-drawn film, Lilo and Stitch, which stood out for its use of watercolor backgrounds. The Wild Robot trades in the watercolor for settings that look oil-painted, and animal characters that move and behave like animals, even if they talk (the film finds a clever way to translate their growls into English). The film’s opening minutes are nearly dialogue-free, and Sanders introduces Roz to audiences by watching the robot move around the woods, mimicking the behavior of the surrounding animals and allowing Roz to take advantage of her robotic settings to navigate mountains and streams. It’s an amazing sequence, setting up Roz as a stranger in the wilderness, a giant the animals fear. 

The heart of the story is the relationship between Roz, Brightbill and the fox, Fink. And while kids will laugh at the slapstick antics of the animal creatures, parents will be moved by Roz’s story as she tries to raise a kid in a world where everything seems intent on killing them. This film’s world is dangerous; every animal wants to kill another one, and the film doesn’t shy away from the dog-eat-dog (or crab, beaver or squirrel) nature of life. It’s not overly intense, and there’s enough gallows humor to lighten the mood (courtesy of a litter of possum kids), but younger viewers may find it a bit scary at times. 

The parenting metaphor goes beyond mere survival, though. Roz is programmed only to complete tasks as efficiently as possible, something made nearly impossible by the presence of a young duckling who always wants to eat or risks being eaten. Roz doesn’t quite understand the new drive to care for this youngster even though it goes against her programming; as Roz learns to dig deeper into her archives and find resources she didn’t know were available, the film becomes a touching and powerful story of the exhaustion, hardship and reward of parenting. And while there’s more to the story – including conflict with a crew of robots tasked with bringing the wild robot home – its emotional core remains focused on Roz and Brightbill, and there are several moments where tissues will likely be required. 

It’s perhaps inevitable that The Wild Robot will be compared to Wall-E and The Iron Giant, two other animated films centered on robots prompted to disobey their programming in the name of love. And while the comparisons are appropriate, The Wild Robot never feels derivative, largely because its emotional core is so strong and its visual accomplishments so striking. And besides, if you’re going to compare it to any other movie, those are two of the greatest animated films of the last 30 years, and it’s a high compliment that The Wild Robot deserves to be named alongside them. 

Were it just a metaphor for parenting, the film would still be worth mentioning. But in its back half, after I thought it had already reached its emotional crescendo, The Wild Robot turns into something slightly different, becoming a story of community, loving enemies and undoing your own programming to live alongside those you might otherwise be compelled to attack (even my 9-year-old daughter turned said “this reminded me of what we learn about in Sunday School.”). And while it’s thematic material often found in kids’ films, it’s portrayed with simplicity, humor and tenderness that keeps it from feeling like an “eat your vegetables” moral (it might slightly contradict itself in its closing action sequence, where animal creatures take on an army of robots, but it’s such an energetic sequence, I won’t ding it too hard). The Wild Robot has allegory and lessons, but Sanders is such a skilled storyteller – in addition to Lilo and Stitch, he directed one of the other best Dreamworks movies, How to Train Your Dragon – that they all feel organic and moving in their own right. 

I haven’t mentioned the voice cast, and that’s not because it’s not noteworthy but because I appreciate the restraint. There are stars and famous comedians present, but the casting never comes off as gimmicky. Yes, you can’t go wrong with Matt Berry as grumpy beaver who, at one point, utters the phrase “male bovine excrement.” But I was surprised at the sheer number of famous voices in the cast – from Pedro Pascal as Fink to Mark Hamill as a bear to Catherine O’ Hara as a possum (who might get the film’s darkest and funniest line) – mainly because no one overshadows another. The film is frequently funny, but the cast feels natural and organic to this world, and in the end this feels less like another Dreamworks comedian-fronted cartoon and more like a fable voiced by gifted actors. 

And that includes Lupita Nyong’o as Roz. As A Quiet Place: Day One proved earlier this year, any film is elevated just by Nyongo’s presence, and it’s easy to overlook how versatile her performance is here. Roz is a robot and Nyong’o always keeps that front and center; nearly everything is a result of programming and internalized tasks. But Nyongo’s also ably brings in heart, humor and strength, and it’s by turns a very funny and affecting performance, and gives the film its emotional anchor. 

I realize that what I described might just sound like any other above-average kids’ movie. And maybe the best compliment I can pay The Wild Robot is that, on paper, it looks like nothing special but, in practice, it transcends the medium, energetic, visually dazzling and emotionally gripping like few other films this year. It’s possible that this film might be affecting me more because I’m a parent – and seeing it with my daughter, both of us bursting into tears at different moments, I’m sure had an effect on my viewing experience – but I don’t think so. The storytelling is so clear, the skill on display so dazzling that I can’t imagine anyone not walking out dazed. I feel like it’s a movie I’ll revisit and write about again in the years to come. It feels too faint of praise to say that The Wild Robot is the year’s best animated film; it’s one of the best movies of the year, period.