The Wild Robot, 2024.
Directed by Chris Sanders.
Starring Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry, and Ving Rhames.
SYNOPSIS:
DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, based on the book by Peter Brown, arrives on 4K Ultra HD after its theatrical run earlier this year. In addition to the obligatory digital copy code, you get a nice selection of bonus features highlighted by a group commentary track with director Chris Sanders and others as they discuss the making of the film.
Sometimes I watch a movie and find myself wishing the story chose more interesting directions than the ones it went in. Such is the case with the new animated film The Wild Robot, from DreamWorks.
Yes, it’s a kids’ film, so feel free to accuse me of being a grumpy so-and-so, but I would argue that it doesn’t matter which demographics are a movie’s primary audience. A story is a story, and it should be appreciated by everyone.
And when it comes to kids’ fare, consider many of Pixar’s movies, which are often unafraid to go there, so to speak. Case in point: Carl Fredricksen getting arrested early on in the movie Up (and, yes, the heart-wrenching montage preceding that moment).
So, back to The Wild Robot, whose titular hero ends up on an island after a cargo ship sinks. The movie is set sometime in the future, and this robot was destined for use with a variety of manual chores, whether domestic or commercial.
Known as ROZZUM 7134, which is later shortened to Roz, the robot is accidentally activated by some curious otters and immediately sets to work identifying itself to the island’s animal inhabitants. It manages to scare them all away, so it spends time partially shut down in a learning mode, which enables it to understand what the animals are saying when it reawakens.
Of course, the animals are still scared of it, except a newly hatched orphaned gosling that has imprinted on Roz, who doesn’t know what to do with it. An opossum mother named Pinktail explains what Roz needs to do to ensure it can fly away with the other geese when the time to migrate arrives, and a fox named Fink decides to help Roz, apparently because it had a crappy childhood.
The gosling acquires the name Brightbill, and the other geese shun him because of his adoptive mother. It’s not hard to see where the story goes from there: Roz learns all about the very human task of being a mother, Brightbill overcomes a variety of obstacles to prove himself to the other geese, and Fink discovers that he doesn’t have to be by himself all the time.
Brightbill’s success in joining the other geese happens with a good 20-30 minutes left in the movie, which is where I was hoping the story might go in an unexpected direction. Instead, we get a fairly rote third act involving the evil corporation that created Roz and its goal of retrieving its property. Meanwhile, Roz has, of course, proven herself (itself?) worthy of the animals’ respect, and they don’t want her to leave.
In the end, The Wild Robot is a nice little story, and if you have kids, I’m sure they’ll enjoy it. And, heck, you’ll probably appreciate it too. My youngest kid is now 17, so I watched this one by myself, but I still enjoyed it. I just felt like it hewed too closely to a lot of well-worn story tropes.
And, yes, the movie looks spectacular in 4K Ultra HD. The animation has a painted quality to it that’s very nice, and I’m sure it will look great on pretty much any setup, since this is a new movie that was digitally created and digitally presented, without a film intermediary that could cause a generational loss in picture quality. You get a code for a digital copy too, of course.
The extras found here are serviceable too, starting with a commentary track in which Director and Screenwriter Chris Sanders, Producer Jeff Hermann, Editor Mary Blee, Production Designer Raymond Zibach, Head of Story Heidi Jo Gilbert, and Head of Character Animation Jakob HjortJensen chat about the movie’s development, which started as an adaptation of a book of the same name by Peter Brown. (He wrote two sequels, which will apparently be adapted too.)
Group commentary tracks always threaten to veer off into unrelated conversations, inside jokes, and so forth, but this one pretty much stays on course throughout. The participants even ask each other questions about things that pertain to their specific domain, which is nice. It’s basically a self-moderated discussion.
You also get an alternate opening to the movie and the storyboards for a deleted sequence, both with introductions by Sanders, as well as a pair of short featurettes focused on the voice cast.
Assembly Required: Animating The Wild Robot gets into the movie’s genesis, while Feeling Alive focuses on author Peter Brown. Composer Kris Bowers gets his turn in the spotlight to talk about his score, while musician Maren Morris pops in too for a chat about the original songs she wrote.
The last two extras are of the crafty variety: Sanders explains how to draw Roz while artist Genevieve Tsai does the same for Fink, Brightbill, and Pinktail, and instructions are given for constructing a kite based on Brightbill.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
