Animated movies are truly unique and often have the power to move you in ways that live filmmaking can’t. Even so, it is a rare event that one gets recognized for its greatness outside of its animation category. Only three animated movies have been nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) and from what I can, The Wild Robot could be the fourth.
It’s a long time coming for director Chris Sanders who also wrote the screenplay for the DreamWorks Animation film. He’s been nominated for an Oscar three times for Best Animated Feature: Lilo & Stitch (2002), How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and The Croods (2013). Of course, Sanders had a lot to work with. The movie is based off of the award-winning children’s book of the same name written by Peter Brown. The 2016 book is a #1 New York Times bestseller and has been named one of the best children’s books of that year by many.
ROZZUM unit 7134, a helpful robot (not unlike Rosie from The Jetsons or Baymax from Big Hero 6) takes a beating when she awakes to find that she has mistakenly crash-landed on an island. Undeterred by her surroundings, she desperately questions the animals living there who it was that ordered her. Not understanding who she is or what she is, “Roz” (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) is rejected by all of them. That is until she finds an orphaned gosling that she names Brightbill (Boone Storm and then later Kit Connor) and since baby birds tend to bond with the first things that they see once they are hatched, Roz becomes his mother. She sees the gosling as her new assignment.
This strange relationship is taken notice by some of the woodland creatures including the fox Fink (Pedro Pascal) a loner who wants to make this new relationship work for him and Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara) and overworked opossum mother of seven who lends some much-needed motherly advice. The movie also features the voice talents of Bill Nighy, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames and Stephanie Hsu.
As the animals and the robot adapt to each other by appreciating each other’s differences and abilities. While there is plenty of sentimentality in The Wild Robot, it never feels overly so. It is balanced by at least one real-life concept: not everybody is going to like you. Throughout the movie, different characters speak as to how they are “hated” by others. At one point, it is understood that in order for them all to survive, they will need to tolerate living with each other. And for Roz, she has to wrestle with either doing what she was assigned to do by the company that made her or doing what would be best for everyone. This includes helping Brightbill to learn how to fly so that he can migrate with the others and then saying goodbye when he does.
With the exception of the little girl at my screening who kept uttering “Is he dead?” every time that Roz took a beating in the film, The Wild Robot resonates with every age. It’s funny and touching featuring just the right amount of sarcasm to keep it from getting cloyingly too sweet. It’s also one beautiful film applying a hand-painted aesthetic to the film. At times, it feels as if it is an oil painting that has come to life.
The Wild Robot is the best work that DreamWorks Animation has ever produced and so it’s sad knowing that it is also the last film to be entirely done in-house. The studio has announced that they will be relying more on outside vendors more frequently beginning next year. Perhaps the success of this film might help them to change their minds.
Main Image: DreamWorks Animation
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