Cast:
Lupita Nyong'o (ROZZUM unit 7134), Pedro Pascal (Fink), Kit Connor (Brightbill), Catherine O'Hara (Pinktail), Bill Nighy (Longneck), Stephanie Hsu (Vontra), Mark Hamill (Thorn), Matt Berry (Paddler), and Ving Rhames (Thunderbolt) Written and Directed by Chris Sanders (#294 - How to Train Your Dragon and #387 - Lilo & Stitch)
Review:
"I only engage with projects that take risks, and go to audacious places. But with The Wild Robot, there was also an unusual purity to the world which I never expected to encounter in my career. The animal characters have no cars, jobs, neckties or cell phones. The animals move like … animals! I knew immediately we had to elevate our visuals so they would allow the emotional wavelengths to fully resonate. Put simply, the style of this film needed to be worthy of the story we were telling."
It probably shouldn't be a surprise that this is based on a children's book (with illustrations that were actually black and white) by Peter Brown. He had been struck with an image in his head of a robot next to a tree when working on a book that stood with him and eventually it came to him as basically an extreme example of a "fish out of water" story that gelled with his love of science fiction and nature. The Wild Robot was published in 2016 and became its own series, complete with a third book that was released last year. Chris Sanders had a daughter that had read the book but hadn't really thought about it until Dreamworks Animation had the rights to the book for possible filming since before the book had been published. He read the book and described it as "at once deceptively simple, and emotionally complex" while believing he was the guy that could bring the book to the screen. A handful of films have been cited by Sanders as inspiration such as Bambi and My Neighbor Totoro, as he had the imagery of each film in his head when reading The Wild Robot and it came to him that a film adaptation had to be visually sophisticated. This is apparently the last Dreamworks Animation film to be produced fully in-house at their studio, as they are cutting costs by using third-party studios for further features (which are distributed by Universal Studios). It happens to be the first animated film directed by Sanders since The Croods (2013).
I'm sure there is no surprise to be found here in saying this is a pretty good feature. It is the execution that matters most when it comes to making a story about kindness and a select group of talking animals stand on its own in crisp entertainment. It is the kind of movie that looks and feels like it would make a neat doubleheader with The Iron Giant (1999), if that makes sense. The hand-painted aesthetic is lovely in establishing the atmosphere that arises when trying to make a film look and feel organic that really should be seen on a screen as big as possible. The 102-minute runtime shows plenty of warmth without being a vessel for cheap songs or bits just for the sake of it. If the books aimed for a sense of being a fable, the film surely has achieved that same effect by making one remember what a connection means to the world around it to go with appreciating a landscape as breathtaking as nature can be. It rests on the shoulders of Nyong'o to make the lead work as well as it does in making the journey of a robot (and accompanying expressions from the salespitcher-turned-naturebot) worth seeing play out, which she does quite well. The pursuit of a task leading to adoptive motherhood is tenderly handled by her to go with Pascal and his trading of snide remarks and advice that is just as effective in showing the importance in following the circle of life. One takes flight when the moment requires one to feel flight and one has the same wonder when spending a few moments away from the island setting in the sheer difference that is apparent in a less-natural world. In other words, it isn't merely just a mother hen story with a cute duck, it really is a neat little coming-of-age story, for which Connor handles that part pretty well. The training sequences of trying to be one with a species (such as flying) is pretty fascinating. There are a few bits of levity provided by O'Hara and Berry while Hsu comes in late for an interesting (if not exactly covered too much) look in trying to do friendly forced compliance for robots. The ending for the film is interesting, mostly because it really does click this as a fable worth looking to and back again that doesn't play a cheap trick on the audience and leaves them satisfied, regardless of if there was a craving for a sequel or not. In general, it is a dazzling movie that has plenty to offer in crisp filmmaking from committed people and voices to match that should play well for just about anybody, which is a worthwhile thing to say when it comes to a film about kindness.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
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