By Sandra Hall
The Wild Robot ★★★★
(PG) 102 minutes
The Wild Robot’s ROZZUM Unit 7134, otherwise known as Roz, is a descendant of some of cinema’s most benign robotic creations. C-3PO and R2-D2 have both brought something to her DNA.
Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), Brightbill (Kit Connor) and Fink (Pedro Pascal) in a scene from The Wild Robot.Credit: 2024 DreamWorks Animation
The word “wild” just refers to her circumstances. She’s been stranded on an island where her only companions are to be found among the wildlife sharing the island with her. Lonely? It could be – except that this is a DreamWorks movie and everybody speaks English in voices belonging to some of cinema’s most familiar actors. Bill Nighy lends his wry tone to an avuncular goose, Mark Hamill voices a grizzly bear, Catherine O’Hara does the same for a possum and The Mandalorian’s Pedro Pascal is heard as a cynical but friendly fox.
Already there are great claims for the film, which is based on Peter Brown’s bestselling children’s’ picture book. Its director, Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon) began his career in hand-drawn animation and he hasn’t been holding back, citing both Monet and Miyazaki as influences on the film’s style.
Its landscapes are certainly beautiful and while I didn’t detect any Monet moments, there are enough mountainous crags and towering pine groves to conjure up the work of Albert Bierstadt or the other Romantic painters of the American West.
To match all this grandeur, the script is humming with ecological ambitions. It aims to have us leave the cinema with high hopes of the positive connections to be made between nature and technology, and while the island’s animals don’t exactly abandon their predatory instincts in the course of the action, they show that they can forget about eating one another long enough to band together against a common enemy.
Roz (Lupita N’yongo), and Brightbill (Kit Connor)Credit: Roz (Lupita N’yongo), and Brightbill (Kit Connor)
The result of all this could have seemed boringly grandiose but there are nice sardonic touches, along with some briskly choreographed slapstick. And the cuteness that often afflicts DreamWorks animations with animal characters is toned down. Much of the fun stems from their essential wildness.
Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) receives a hostile reception from most of them when she first arrives. Having realised she’s landed in the wrong place, she’s about to get herself carried back to the robotics factory when she accidentally kills the parents of a newly hatched gosling.
Even though her programming does not encompass motherhood, she decides to stay and care for the gosling until it’s big enough to fly away with the island’s geese on their annual migration.
Emotion isn’t supposed to come into this decision. She’s been programmed to complete every task she undertakes and that’s what she’s doing. But the gosling doesn’t understand that. To him, she’s his mother.
The big sentimental finish is hardly surprising but comes with an unexpected postscript that clinches the film’s bid to be a truly original work of animation.
The Wild Robot is released in cinemas on September 19.
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