The Wild Robot
Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), a robotic assistant unit, crashes on an island en route to her customer. While stranded there, she becomes mother to a sweet gosling (Kit Harrington). With the help of a wily fox (Pedro Pascal), she must raise the gosling while struggling to survive in the wild.
STORY: A-
A sweet tale that every family will be able to relate to.
There are all types of families these days. Step families, single parent families, adoptive families, same sex families, foster families, found families … the list goes on and on.
I don’t think there’s a label for a family comprised of a robot, a fox, and a gosling. I doubt it exactly resembles any family you’ve met. Yet at the same time, its unique makeup allows every family to see themselves in it.
PEOPLE: B+
Lupita N’Yongo crafts a voice performance that hits all the right notes.
In the middle of Roz’s Siri-esque speech patterns, Nyong’o occasionally adds a drop of heartache. Or a drop of desperation. Or motherly pride.
It’s a most impressive feat: she’s able to evoke such strong human emotion while never coming across as anything other than the robot she is
FILM NERD STUFF: A
The animation captivates and thrills.
For so long, CGI has tried to design worlds that look real. For the most part, it doesn’t work. Maybe they’ve been focusing on the wrong sense.
The new trend of adding texture to animation (think 2023’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Spider-Verse movies) may not conjure a world that looks real. But their texture makes these worlds feel tangible, like you can reach right into them and literally feel something. Strangely, that quality creates a world more authentic than one that actually looks real.
ONE BIG LESSON: A
Sometimes, to survive, we must become something more than we were programmed for.
I loved this sentence the moment I heard it in the trailer. After seeing the film, the thing I love most about it is what the word “more” refers to.
If you want to know what that word is, look under the trailer video at the bottom.
FINAL COMMENTS:
Most animated films these days are designed for kids. But they come with enough subtle humor and allusions to make it tolerable for the adults who take them to the theater.
This film flips that equation. It seems squarely aimed at parents who yearn for a film that will celebrate all the joy, pain,and utter bafflement that comes with being a parent. But it also includes enough talking animals and physical humor for the kids, who will somehow find a way to stay in their seats all the way from its wonderful beginning to emotional end.
FINAL GRADE: A-
The Wild Robot is playing in theaters at the time of writing. Rated PG. Common Sense says 8+.
SPOILER: —> The “more” that we must do in order to survive is: be kind to one another.