The Wild Robot

The Plot: Following a shipwreck, service robot Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) finds herself stranded on a lush island full of wildlife but no sign of humans. Programmed to fulfill her protocols, Roz is unsure how to react in such an alien environment. Built to help humans in a domestic environment, Roz now finds herself bonding with the local animals – one in particular. A gosling that she dubs Brightbill (Kit Connor) imprints on her and immediately identifies Roz as her mother. Now both of them will need to learn from each other in order to grow and understand their purpose, with a helping hand from smart-mouthed fox Fink (Pedro Pascal)…

The Verdict: Animated films from the major studios can often feel like ‘product’ or ‘content’. Something to fill in gaps in the release schedule, manufactured for popular entertainment with an assembly-line approach and some cute toy merchandise to go with it. Now three decades in showbiz, Dreamworks Animation can sometimes be guilty of that churn-out effect. Then again, so can Pixar with some of their films (Cars springs to mind). And then there’s something like The Wild Robot, a Dreamworks Animation film that immediately shatters any such predictable comparisons to mark out its own distinctive robot footprint in the sand. With no introductory backstory, director Chris Sanders plunges intelligent robot Roz and the audience into its fish-out-of-water scenario but then further turns that on its head. It then establishes its cutesy story of Roz bonding with a gosling, but then thankfully sets aside the sugarcoating for a story of separation, migration and boldly going where no service robot has gone before by not following protocol.

It’s based on a series of books by Peter Brown. His original idea for it was a sketch of a robot in a tree, asking himself what an intelligent robot would do in the wilderness. Roz has no reference point for this environment and the animals that inhabit it, being designed for human assistance. Sanders takes an unusual approach here in keeping the human element to a minimum. There are hints of an apocalyptic incident or an environmental disaster, with flooded cities viewed from a distance above. The few humans in this futuristic film live in enclosed bubbles with cultivated gardens attended to by other service robots. This is contrasted with the largely-abandoned natural world that Roz now inhabits with the woodland animals who initially regard her with suspicion but soon come to realise that she doesn’t present a threat. With a nod to Short Circuit, the film becomes a learning experience for Roz who is something of a livewire herself as she comes to understand the needs of her young charge, while also resisting reporting back to HQ which would most likely wipe her experiential memory.

The script by Sanders and Brown is a thing of beauty – simple in its set-up, but complex and emotionally rewarding in its execution. It could easily have been a film just about bonding and friendship, but there’s a deeper purpose at work. It establishes the idea of community and mutual cooperation, that the animals stop hunting each other in order to huddle together for warmth during the cold winter months. That’s pretty sophisticated for a family film with talking animals – not usually so convincing, but the voice talent here is as good as can be hoped for. Pedro Pascal in particular is delightful as the wily fox that initially wanted to eat Brightbill, but sees potential to support this runt of the litter into a winner. The film has the gorgeous visuals to match the script too. In depicting its teeming-with-life natural environment, there are painterly compositions and mountain backgrounds that have the hazy look of an Impressionist painting. This is no ordinary animation and comfortably sets itself apart from the more usual Dreamworks Animation fare to become something special.

The Wild Robot has a big beating heart in the right place instead of a clunky CPU that otherwise might not compute. It’s mildly sentimental, but in a progressive way that builds on character development with room to develop further should audiences decide that they want more from this imaginative world (which they should). A sequel is in the works already, so that’s a sign of confidence. For once, here’s a family film that should appeal not just to the little ones but all ages. It has fulfilled its own objectives to entertain and enlighten, while standing alongside ‘Inside Out 2’ as one of the year’s best and most imaginative animated films. Robo-tastic.

Rating: 4 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor