The Wild Robot (2024) review

Dir. Chris Sanders

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

“Don’t fly like them. Fly like you.” – Fink, The Wild Robot

Just as Inside Out 2 was poised to suck up all the oxygen in the animation game this year, DreamWorks unleashes The Wild Robot, a triumph filled with understated moments of humor coupled with poignant revelations presented with the flair and scope of an epic. It’s a delight to indulge on the big screen, but it brings its own unintended set of worries. This is the final film to-be-animated in-house by DreamWorks, for the company will be relying heavily on outside studios after this calendar year. One can only hope the company will partner with those who are committed to realizing the full scope of artists’ visions.

The Wild Robot‘s vision is that of writer/director Chris Sanders, among the most underrated names in all of animation. Sanders created the characters in Lilo & Stitch, even voicing the latter, and was also the man behind How to Train Your Dragon. Even his version of The Call of the Wild — released merely a month before theaters closed due to the onset of the pandemic — recalled early Disney swashbucklers like Swiss Family Robinson. Sanders and a team of gifted animators employ a delightful look and aura to a movie that’s themes revolve around compassion, empathy, and cooperation.

Set on a future Earth, a cargo ship carrying a fleet of robotic servants crashes on a remote island. The only one to survive the impact is ROZZUM Unit 7134 (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), who was designed to serve as a family’s butler. Instead, she’s washed ashore in search of a task she needs to complete. She encounters raccoons, bears, rabbits, possums, and other animals, with whom she interacts by printing out QR code stickers. These island critters think she’s a strange monster. One day, “Roz,” as she becomes known, finds an orphaned egg, which hatches an adorable baby gosling. With the help of a blunt possum named Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), Roz successfully finds her task.

Roz partners with a mischievous yet goodhearted fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), and together, they raise Brightbill (Kit Connor). Thanks to Pinktail, Roz now knows this duty has three parts: she must keep Brightbill alive, teach him how to swim, and eventually teach him to fly in time for the next migration. This proves challenging, not only because Brightbill is so diminutive, but because nobody else is willing to help this unconventional nuclear family. The forest is cluttered with animals who are predators by nature, and survival of the fittest is the only law amongst the land.

Based on Peter Brown’s children’s series of the same name, Sanders and animators make this idyllic island feel lived-in within minutes of the opening credits. Sanders took inspiration from classic Disney pictures and Studio Ghibli, and used recent DreamWorks pictures like The Bad Guys as inspiration. The Wild Robot converges all of these styles beautifully, with such touches as overexposed sunlight, gorgeous lighting textures, and detailed character designed (Fink’s fur looks fluffy enough to be real). The visuals are dreamy, and convey a lightness to go along with the themes and subject matter at hand, which are gently illustrated. There is no need for aggressively maudlin tactics when Sanders’ writing is so tactile.

The casting is pitch-perfect as well, with so much of it boiling down to Nyong’o, who is challenged with being a monotone type that has to grow and learn how to be more emotive over the course of the film. Roz is a complex character, forced to grapple with new, often heart-tugging emotions she can sense, yet doesn’t quite know from where they stem. Pascal is gifted a character whose intentions and vocal tone are more natural. His character progression from a sly fox with cunning abilities turned protective father figure of a runt gosling are cute, yet his instinctive nature offers him a sense of brutal honesty that Roz lacks.

I was also taken by O’Hara’s motherly possum, a predator existing in a world of likeminded creatures, who has taught her young children how to “play dead” when they encounter a stranger. This is funnier than it sounds. O’Hara delivers a similar kind of sarcastic craft as she did in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. There’s also Matt Berry as a goofy beaver. Here’s hoping the next time we see these characters, should there be one, is in a sequel as opposed to a misguided streaming short.

The Wild Robot is a lovely example of a film that packs so much visual and artistic sophistication inside a story that is about very simple, yet easily forgettable ideas. Be kind to one another. Look to understand someone else’s motivations. Note that life is not a race, but a course on which we’re all present, but were not afforded equal starting points. Brightbill’s story is also one to which I believe autistic children can relate, for his outcast status is largely predicated on how differently he communicates with his peers. When a movie packs this much substance, it’s best to sit back and take it all in, appreciating its magnificent qualities, which reveal themselves quickly, in spades.

Voiced by: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry, and Ving Rhames. Directed by: Chris Sanders.