★★★★
A rather beautiful vocal performance from the presenters of Lupita Nyong’o The wild robotwhich is in itself a completely charming film. Adapted from Peter Brown’s 2014 book, the film arrives as another hit from Lilo and Stitch director Chris Sanders, who also offered DreamWorks their How to train your dragon franchise. In keeping with the studio’s recent shift to a more painterly house style, it boasts a panopticon of lavish animation here, giving rise to a rusticity in its artistic world-building. We remember those classic Disney tales about wacky forest creatures and Walt’s interest in the brutal beauty of the natural world. Added to this is contemporary interest in the rise of artificial intelligence, although with more nuance than most.
Nyong’o voices the versatile household robot ROZZUM Unit 7134, the sole survivor of a storm-struck cargo ship bound for markets there. Thundering waves and dark, abstract clouds – a stunning foreground, no less – left five others in ruins, their steel hulks washed up on a rocky shore. Inadvertently activated by a curious otter, our surviving AI-castaw sets out on a quest to find a customer herself. This is his programming and his entire reason for being: “did someone order me?” Of course, this goes horribly wrong and ROZZUM, perplexed, is quickly branded a “monster” by the surprised islanders.
It’s a sequence that makes for a lively opening, immediately funny and loaded with well-drawn slapstick mayhem. There’s also a wild imagination in ROZZUM’s exploratory digs into a vibrant, living world she was never designed to encounter. A magnificent butterfly encounter is particularly memorable, but everything on the island is and is beautifully rendered. Just wait for the action to rise skyward.
The culmination of the ROZZUM’s accidental destructions is a bear hunt; on the edge of a cliff and on an unsuspecting bird’s nest. The goose and all but one of its eggs are killed instantly – the first of The wild robotThe courageous narrative moves of. The only survivor is an egg carrying a runt of a gosling, Brightbill, voiced first by Boone Storme, then by an energetic Kit Connor. Roz – as she has recently been renamed – finds herself forced to care for the orphaned goose, foster its progression to adulthood and prepare it for the migration to come. It is with surprising emotional weight that the film posits that Brightbill would not have survived if Roz had not interrupted the organic flow of natural selection.
It is this interplay between the heartfelt and the earthly, the placement of personified wild animals in a real, unbiased world, that elevates The wild robot from cute animation to vital experience. That’s not to say Sanders’ approach is documentary — Roz co-parents Brightbill with a Pedro Pascal-voiced fox — but does enjoy a tougher edge than most. It’s smart like that. Take the possum voiced by Catherine O’Hara, Pinktail. She’s a world-weary, extremely approachable mother of seven, until she’s not, and there are only six left. It’s a cleverly handled gag, deliriously executed and funny, but also gloriously honest. Other realistic brushes hit harder but are never cruel and never more than a young viewer can handle.
Not content to simply amuse and move, The wild robot offers abundant excitement. Soaring music from Bridgerton’s Kris Bowers overflows with wonder, sweeping through the film’s dazzling visuals in a heart-swelling rush of pure joy. The animation is spotty and painterly, achieving with deceptive simplicity the fusion of two and three dimensions that Disney envisioned. Wish sought after and has been so far from last year. It’s a style and approach to hue reminiscent of Mary Blair’s illustrations that conceptualized Walt’s 1950s designs for Sleeping Beauty And Alice in Wonderland. In this regard, DreamWorks owes much to Illumination, whose rapid competitive rise over the past decade 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 both a sonic delight and a beauty to the eye. All engage with a seductive dedication to the emotional truth of the story, offering warmth with worldliness. Nyong’o’s vocal journey is subtle but deeply satisfying. You will be amazed at how far she takes you with her.
T.S.