The Wild Robot (2024)
Enchantment is so often missing from entertainment nowadays. Sometimes we don’t want a heavy message, or a deep, important story. Sometimes we just want wonder and awe. The Wild Robot absolutely fits that bill, with just enough message to give everything some bite.
When a robot named Roz is shipwrecked on an island inhabited only by assorted animals, it all seems very strange at first. For everyone. The animals think Roz is a monster.
Roz sticks to her original programming, which is all about being assigned tasks. She is highly adaptable, though, and can imitate any animal or any linguistic style, and it doesn’t have to be human. Basically, Roz makes C-3PO look like a piker.
It doesn’t take long, however, for a task to present itself. When Roz finds a goose egg, she suddenly becomes the parent of a baby gosling. Naturally, she’s clueless, but a helpful possum named Pinktail gives her some hints. The gosling has to eat, sleep, learn to swim, and learn to fly.
None of this makes sense to Roz, who has no clue how a gosling should be taught anything, or what it means to eat sleep, learn to swim and learn to fly. However, she soon makes friends with a fox named Fink, the forest’s bestia non grata, who shows her the ropes. The gosling, who’s officially called “0168,” is affectionately known as Brightbeak.
Of course, there’s the little matter of the rest of the forest thinking Roz is a monster, but Roz wins them over and soon the animals consider her one of them. Especially after she rescues all of them from a blinding blizzard and plops them down in her super-sophisticated hut with the fire pit in the middle. Things are pretty blissful, especially once the predators agree not to eat anyone.
Meanwhile, Brightbeak grows, thrives, and impossibly, learns to fly and swim, but things are too good to last. The outside world will come creeping in one way or another, and Roz has some choices to make.
The Wild Robot is an unabashedly lovely film, and I’m saying that as someone who originally pegged it as a ripoff of Dances With Wolves and Avatar. While it has some things in common with both of those films, it’s impressive on its own. It doesn’t get political, it’s got a level of innocence, and there’s actual character development going on, even if the main character shouldn’t be sentient.
Next to Roz, Fink is Exhibit A in the character development department. Even though he’s kind of an outcast among the forest animals, simply because no one can trust him, he’s the one who has the most to offer. He not only finds food for Brightbeak, but he’s there to be Roz’s in as far as explaining forest life goes.
The attention to detail is impressive as well. The animation looks fantastic. It’s bright, but not so much that it’s cloying. There’s one scene in particular where Roz puts her hand on a rockface that’s covered with butterflies, which go swirling around her for a long minute, and I literally gasped when she did it, only not out of horror. I can’t remember the last time I did that in a movie. It was a really pretty moment.
What also makes the film work is its great sense of perspective. The film avoids bringing people into it and refuses to blame people, or anyone else, for that matter, for any of Roz’s problems. The few people we see later in the film, don’t really have faces and don’t say anything. It’s simply Roz, the animals, and Roz’s relationship with Brightbeak.
It’s nice to be able to go to a movie and just have a good time. The Wild Robot not only exceeded my expectations, but it’s so danged cute that it made me a fan.
The Wild Robot is currently in theaters. Rated PG.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Boone Storm, Snowdown, Alexandra Novelle, Raphael Alejandro, Paul-Mikel Williams, Eddie Park, Dee Bradley Baker, Randy Thom, Avrielle Corti, Keston John
Directed by Chris Sanders.
Written by Chris Sanders and Peter Brown (novel).