What’s It About
After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island’s animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Perhaps the best thing about The Wild Robot is that it rarely feels like a Hollywood-produced animated film. Deceptively simple, it tackles weighty ideas like seeing “kindness as a survival skill” and how bonds of love can be more challenging than innate differences. And for most of the tale, there is no bad guy. That’s not to say there isn’t conflict, but the movie doesn’t need a “Big Bad” to continue its story. Instead, it depends on relationships and emotional resonance and does it in a way that entertains both children and adults. The Wild Robot is set on a future Earth where major corporation Universal Dynamics supplies versatile robot assistants (“ROZZUM utilitarian robots”) to homes, businesses, and even farms. But in a freak storm, one of the Universal Dynamics cargo ships capsizes, and model “Roz 7134” turns on inadvertently, seeking a customer to serve. When Roz realizes that she is in a location populated solely by animals, she readjusts to learn their communication patterns and help them in their daily struggle for survival. Unfortunately, those good intentions leave Roz to care for an orphaned gosling she names “Brightbill” (Kit Connor); without any parental programming – so to speak – Roz has to lean on the guidance of a wily red fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), forming an oddball family unit between the three. She soon realizes that she needs to understand the animals on the island, and she ventures out to learn their languages. In attempting to fit in with the island culture to accomplish her task, she inadvertently kills a goose and destroys its nest. As one egg survives, hatches, and its gosling imprints on Roz, she realizes her task is to become the goose’s mother and prepare him to leave the island for winter. A robot becoming sentient is one of those science fiction tropes from the very beginning. In The Wild Robot, it’s dealt with in such a way that kids will find it understandable without insulting older viewers’ intelligence. Although the movie does have things to say, it doesn’t do so unsubtly. There’s humor, action, and spectacle, but Rozz and Brightbill’s mother/son relationship is the most vital component of The Wild Robot. Handling an aspect of this interaction – the necessity of a parent to let go and allow the child to gain independence – is dealt with delicately and precisely. The Wild Robot doesn’t look like every other computer-generated animated film. Instead of photorealism, tactile aesthetics is used. The result is immediately distinct from 2024’s biggest animations to date, Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4. A migration scene in which thousands of geese take to the air is nothing short of breathtaking. Sanders also does a great deal more with camera movement than most animated films, showing the kind of innovation that hasn’t been evident since the early films of Disney’s animated 1990s. In so doing, Roz finds herself on a ticking clock: Brightbill needs to learn both to swim and to fly before the winter migration hits, while Roz is conflicted between her self-chosen service to Brightbill and her deeper programming to signal Universal Dynamics of her location and fulfill her “true” function. From the ingenuity in the design and functions of the Roz 7134 robot to the wilderness world and various animals in it, the mix of nature and technology is fun and uniquely hopeful in depicting harmony between the two. The message is simply wholesome, and this film offers a life lesson that you don’t need fame or wealth to succeed. Enough is the only reward for being in need of a needy person who needs you”. This would be a good reminder for most adults and an example for many young people.
OUR RATING – A UNIVERSAL 8