DreamWorks Animation falls somewhere in the middle of the road in terms of great animated filmmakers. Even with the highs of Shrek or Prince of Egypt, most of the films vary wildly in quality and have a clunker or two in the franchise….except one, glorious exception. Chris Sanders’s How to Train Your Dragon films are the shining beacon of beauty for DreamWorks, magestically taking to the sky while crafting one of the great human/pet bonds on the big screen. Sanders’s creative brilliance was enlisted again to bring Peter Brown’s beloved The Wild Robot to life…meaning DreamWorks has given Toothless a companion at the top of their film heap.
That companion is ROZZUM unit 7134 (Lupita Nyongo’o), a Universal Dynamics robot that crash lands onto a deserted island during a storm. The robot wakes up and tries to its program tasks for the animals of the forest, who, um, are justifiably scared of this weird interloper. The robot then spends its time learning the languages of the animals, including a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who shows Roz (names don’t have numbers, duh!) the ropes of the island. But Roz still struggles to find purpose here…until a series of accidents forces a gosling she names Brightbill (Kit Connor) to imprint upon her. Translation: Roz’s new task is being a mother, something Universal Dynamics didn’t exactly program into ROZZUM units.
If DreamWorks isn’t building Wild Robot Island yet, they’re real dumb. This place is a visual feast, with jaw dropping moments in the big and the little. Apparently Chris Sanders has his head perennially in the clouds. No one is better than him at capturing the joy of flying. The best sequences of this movie are when Brightbill is in those early stages of flight, learning he has a wealth of experiences ahead of him as he becomes an adult goose. In that 10-20 minutes, flocks of geese take off during a red sunset, a falcon and a goose tear through clouds in the sky at crazy pace, and Roz and Brightbill simulate a plane takeoff as the camera swoops around them. Each sequence builds upon the other, growing bigger and bigger as the scope of the storytelling builds alongside it, some of the best “whoa” moments of The Wild Robot. Don’t worry though, for those with fear of heights or flying, there’s plenty to love on the ground too. We see this place in all seasons: the joyful moss of spring, the fiery heats of summer, the color explosion of fall, and the icy cold winter, all wonderfully establishing the sense of place for Roz and the animals. The underappreciated parts of The Wild Robot are which animals the movie chooses to highlight. Most of them aren’t eagles, or zebras, or lions, like lesser animated fare. This is a movie that’s gonna make kids want a pet possum, or fox, or goose. These animals are never treated as well as those more popular animals, but they go about the day to day tough existence and simply press on nobly, thanklessly. And when you’re an outcast like Roz is, this is where you’re going to probably find friends first, and help the audience in turn see a side of these strange animals maybe we didn’t consider before.
Which brings us to The Wild Robot’s real power: the well of story opportunities promised by the title. Lupita Nyongo’o is incredible as Roz, changing her voice as Roz slowly drops her programming and becomes her own thing, learning as she goes. Her scenes with Kit Conner are all as emotionally rich as you might expect, as both find themselves to be outcasts and have to navigate how that works with their strange mother/son relationship. The big climactic moment will bring tears for sure, but I was more touched when Brightbill is about to head out on his big fall migration, and the heft of that reality finally hits Roz. You feel all that emotion like she does, thanks to Nyongo’o’s wonderful voicework. If The Wild Robot was only the Roz/Brightbill story, I’d be more than satisfied. But even under 2 hours, we mine as much as we can out of the wonderful premise. Pedro Pascal’s Fink is the secret ingredient of this tale that makes it so special, finding an inroad into this story for non parents, creating pangs in your heart for when you felt alone and unloved in the world. Catherine O’Hara’s possum mom is awesome here too, giving a grounded matter-of-fact baseline for Roz to hold onto when she needs some guidance on how to parent. We even get little thematic investigations into AI, a purpose-driven life, the beauty and danger of nature, and the inhuman nature of corporate life, all told in ways that kids can digest in some way, no easy feat.
So when you feel all alone, and the world has turned its back on you give me a moment, please to tame your wild robot heart. I know you feel like the walls are closing in on you. It’s hard to find relief, and nature can be so cold, but when darkness is upon your door and you feel like you can’t take anymore. Let Roz be the one you call: if you jump, she’ll break your fall, lift you up and fly away with you into the night. If you need to fall apart, she can mend a broken heart. If you need to crash, then crash and burn you’re not alone. Ok, that’s a Savage Garden song, but I thought the lyrics were close enough to capturing how The Wild Robot made me feel. Now sing it with me: I wanna stand with you on a mountain…