The Wild Robot

A rather lovely vocal performance from Lupita Nyong’o anchors The Wild Robot, which is itself a wholly lovely film. Adapted from the 2014 book by Peter Brown, the film arrives as yet one more hit from Lilo and Stitch director Chris Sanders, who also gifted DreamWorks their How to Train Your Dragon franchise. In keeping with the studio’s recent move to a more painterly house style, boasted here is a panopticon of sumptuous animation, giving rise to a rusticity in its artistic world building. Recalled are those classic Disney tales of zany forest critters and Walt’s own interest in the brutal beauty of the natural world. Added is contemporary interest in the rise of artificial intelligence, albeit with more nuance than most.

Nyong’o voices all-purpose house bot ROZZUM Unit 7134, sole survivor of a storm-struck cargo ship destined for markets yonder. Thunderous waves and dark, abstracted clouds – a stunning first shot, no less – have left five others to waste, their steel carcasses washed across a rocky shore. Inadvertently activated by a curious otter, our surviving castaw-AI embarks upon a quest to find herself a customer. It is her programming and entire raison d’etre: ‘did anyone order me?’ This, of course, goes wildly wrong and the perplexed ROZZUM is instead quickly branded ‘monster’ by startled islanders. 

It’s a sequence that makes for a lively opener, immediately funny and loaded with sharply drawn slapstick mayhem. There’s vivid imagination, too, in the ROZZUM’s explorative excavations of a vibrantly alive world she was never designed to encounter. Particularly memorable is a gorgeous butterfly encounter but all on the island is and are splendidly rendered. Just wait until the action ascends to skies above.

The culmination of the ROZZUM’s accidental destructions is a bear chase; off a cliff edge and onto an unsuspecting bird’s nest. The goose and all but one of her eggs are instantly killed – the first of The Wild Robot’s brave narrative moves. The sole survivor is an egg carrying a gosling runt, Brightbill, first voiced by Boone Storme and then by an energetic Kit Connor. Roz – as she is latterly renamed – finds herself compelled to care for the orphaned goose, to foster his progression into adulthood and prepare him for the coming migration. It is with a surprising emotional weight that the film posits Brightbill would not have survived had Roz not interrupted the organic flow of natural selection.

It is this interplay of the heartfelt and earthy, the placing of personified wild animals within a real and dispassionate world, that elevates The Wild Robot from cutesy animation to vital experience. Such is not to say that Sanders’ approach is documentarian – Roz co-parents Brightbill with a Pedro Pascal voiced fox – but benefits from a harder edge than most. It’s smart that way. Take the Catherine O’Hara voiced opossum, Pinktail. She’s a world-weary and hugely relatable mum of seven, right up until she isn’t, and only six remain. It’s a deftly handled gag, deliriously funny in execution, but gloriously honest too. Other brushes with realism hit harder but are never cruel and never exceed what a young viewer can handle.

Not content with simply amusing and emoting, The Wild Robot offers abundant excitement. A soaring score by Bridgerton’s Kris Bowers brims with wonderment, sweeping the film’s dazzling visuals into a heart-swelling rush of purest joy. The animation is dappled and painterly, achieving with deceptive simplicity the fusion of two and three dimensions that Disney’s Wish sought and fell so critically short of last year. It’s a style and approach to hue that reminds of the Mary Blair illustrations that conceptualised Walt’s 1950s designs for Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland. To this end, DreamWorks owes great debt to Illumination, whose rapid competitive rise over the last ten years can only have spurred the studio’s artistic reinvention.

With additional voice work from Bill Nighy, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Ving Rhames, The Wild Robot is every bit the sonorous pleasure as it is a beauty to the eye. All engage with a winsome dedication to the story’s emotional truth, gifting warmth with the worldliness. Nyong’o’s vocal journey is subtle but deeply satisfying. You’ll be astonished how well she takes you with her.