Movie: The Wild Robot

Brilliant animation, a moving story and a humorous and insightful take on motherhood and technology ensure The Wild Robot offers something for a range of age groups.

The 10 out of 10 rating from two primary school children, their mother and great aunt supports this theory!

DreamWorks Animation’s latest offering based on Peter Brown’s award-winning novel, The Wild Robot, tells of robot ROZZUM unit 7134 or Roz for short, that is shipwrecked on an island only inhabited by animals.

Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) is programmed to help anyone who needs it. But providing help to animals, especially those who are frightened or aggressive towards the towering metallic creature, proves challenging as no one wants her help. Indeed, they either attack or run away from her.

But as we see Roz is resourceful and quickly  learns the language of the unfriendly creatures. Yet, she is still unable to fulfill her purpose of `serving those around her’ until she accidentally kills a family of geese and just manages to rescue one unhatched egg. Soon, a gosling emerges, instantly forming a bond with Roz who he assumes is his mother.

Roz embraces this new role, as she finally has a task to complete, and starts raising the gosling, whom she calls Brightbill (Kit Connor), with the help of a cunning and mischievous fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal). After unsuccessfully trying to eat Brightbill, Fink realises working with Roz is a far smarter idea.

From her research, Roz deduces that the young Brightbill must learn three essentials: how to eat, how to swim and how to fly in time for autumn migration, when he will leave the island with the rest of the geese gaggle.

The Wild Robot then follows Roz’s ‘work’ in achieving all three aims together with her developing relationship with the other animals on the island including an opossum (Catherine O’Hara), a beaver (Matt Barry), a hawk (Ving Rhames) a grizzly bear (Mark Hamill) and the leader of the island’s geese flock Longneck (Bill Nighy).

Roz’s growing relationship with the island’s wildlife proves to be a lifesaver for them. But then the intervention of her human owners who send more machines, including a menacing drone (Stephanie Hsu) to retrieve Roz, threatens the animals’ beautiful home.

Thanks to the work of the animators their `home’ is a work of art. It truly is animation at its very best.

At the same time the dialogue between Roz and the island’s animals proves insightful and is often very funny.

The joys and challenges of motherhood humorously and often emotionally come to the fore in conversations between Roz and the opossum. The relationship between Roz and Brightbill frequently pulls at the heart strings. The importance of belonging and working together is another major feature of the dialogue.

Much of the credit for the impact of the spoken word goes to the work of the actors who bring to life their animated characters.  Nyong’o is a standout as Roz morphs from a task-orientated machine built to serve to an emotional loving ‘mother’.

It’s this combination of talented actors, gorgeous visuals, clever animation and funny and sometimes thought-provoking dialogue that further cements The Wild Robot’s director and writer Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, and Disney’s Lilo & Stitch) as a leader in animated story telling.

The Wild Robot opens in cinemas on Thursday September 19.

*© 2024 DreamWorks Animation.