As wild and wacky as it is moving and magical, The Wild Robot, a DreamWorks Animation production written and directed by Chris Sanders (who co-directed Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods), marks the medium’s emphatic return to its vibrant and vivid hand-painted moorings. Based on the 2016 children’s book of the same name by Peter Brown, the remarkably consummate The Wild Robot tells the story of a marooned helper-robot and an orphaned gosling whose paths cross in tragic and tumultuous circumstances on an island uninhabited by humans.
A deep connection develops between the two, one a shunned avian with no family and the other a lost machine primed for acts that are intrinsically devoid of emotion. From their bonding flows a moving mother-adopted daughter story that transcends with sublime ease the boundary separating the instinctive from the mechanical.
The magnificently executed animated film blends technology, nature, the vitality of wildlife and humanity (although the plot has no human character) to rustle up a vibrant exploration of motherhood and cross-species solidarity in a forest where predators roam free and the weak are perennially under the threat of annihilation.
Are peace and harmony possible in a setting where might is right, survival is a matter of chance, and kindness is an unheard-of thing? As the robot explores the island and encounters the likes of Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), a maternal possum, Longneck (Bill Nighy), an aged Canada goose who aids in the lonely gosling’s coming of age, and Thunderbolt (Ving Rhames), she discovers fresh possibilities (initially, beyond her comprehension) that light the way forward for her and the gosling.
The delectable animation is marvellously immersive and the quality of the storytelling is of the highest order. The Wild Robot is all heart and all flair as it weaves a rich tapestry of colours, emotions and dramatic situations into a simple yet evocative story about learning, unlearning and assimilating across lines that separate one species from another.
Rozzum Unit 7134, shortened to Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), is the sole survivor of a shipwreck that destroys a Universal Dynamics consignment of half a dozen robots. She washes up on an island, intoning: “A Rozzum always completes its task. Just ask.”
But there is nobody on the island to ask. The animals that she encounters in an alien setting where there are no buyers and consumers are understandably flummoxed by her persistent entreaty for instructions. Roz is at a loose end, too. She toys with the option of returning where she has come from but is thwarted by a damaged transmitter.
Continuing to desperately seek a task, she is chased by a grizzly bear (voice of Mark Hamill). As she flees, she crushes a goose nest, killing the mother. Only one egg survives. Roz protects it from a hungry fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal). The egg hatches and a Canada goose is born. Roz find a purpose on the island. She also makes friends with the foxy Fink.
Roz raises Brightbill (Kit Connor) – that is the name she and Fink think up for the gosling – and teaches him to swim and fly but not without having to deal with daunting hurdles that make the tasks near-impossible.
Early in the film, as she labours to underscore her reason for being, Roz preens that she is “programmed for physical mimicry”. Although nobody has an immediate use for that attribute, she proceeds to demonstrate the advantages of adaptability, no matter how difficult it might be. She makes slow but steady progress and learns to respond to feelings as opposed to acting merely on instructions.
Couched in the deceptively uncomplicated story are themes of great import, ranging from the benefits of peaceful co-existence to the plight of the marginalised and misunderstood in ecosystems controlled with the might of the majority.
Both Roz and Brightbill are on the fringes of the world that they must find their way around in. The creatures of the island keep Roz at an arm’s length, perceiving her as a monstrous pariah, which sums up the classic predicament of the quintessential outsider.
Brightbill is the runt of the litter, a weakling who does not fit in. The struggle to belong to her kind weighs her down, but Roz and Fink, who laments that nobody likes and trusts him, make common cause with her and form a team on the island where the laws of nature ordain that some animals will be predators and some others will fall prey to them.
Vontra (Stephanie Hsu) arrives on an aerial ship to take Roz back to Universal Dynamics. You don’t belong in the wilderness, Roz is told curtly. She insists that she does. I am a wild robot, she asserts. You are in the wrong place and you are the wrong thing, says Vontra. “You are not supposed to feel,” she says.
A sustained sense of drama powers The Wild Robot, a film that never flags even when a few of the thoughts that it trots out may appear a little hackneyed. It is never a bad idea to repeat truisms that will never, or should not ever, become irrelevant and redundant.
Composer Kris Bowers, in his first animated film outing, delivers a rousing score that soars, dives and floats in the manner of the creatures that we see on screen fighting against the odds to survive predatory attacks and other calamities.
If you love animation films, and even if you don’t, give the child in you the opportunity to savour the beauty and subliminal potency of The Wild Robot. It is as good as any we have seen for a long time.
The Wild Robot Review: The film is all heart and all flair as it weaves a rich tapestry of colours, emotions and dramatic situations into a simple yet evocative story.
