Review | ‘The Wild Robot’ — a new Dreamworks best

Photo Collage by Braylan Enscoe, Staff Photographer

No movie has been more tailor-made to make me sob. I am a fully grown adult woman — yet, if you were to peer into the audience of my screening of “The Wild Robot,” my tears could be seen and my sobs could be heard, far bigger and far louder than all the little boys and girls next to me (they were crying too, I swear).

Based on the book of the same name, “The Wild Robot” follows Rozzum Unit 7134 (Roz for short), a newly manufactured intelligent task robot whose shipment crashes on a remote island in the middle of nowhere. The island is inhabited by wild animals who begin to fear her and call her a monster. Roz accidentally kills a family of geese in a rockslide — but one egg survives. She makes it her task to teach the orphaned gosling, Brightbill, how to eat, swim and fly by fall.

Maybe it only makes complete sense to me, but animated movies about robots who find genuine companionship always make me cry. “The Iron Giant,” “WALL-E,” “Big Hero 6,” more recently “Robot Dreams” and now “The Wild Robot.” It is fascinating how a movie about a robot and talking animals teaches us more about the human condition than humans can. Many people will come away from this film with a new outlook on family, friendship and what it means to be alive. 

Dreamworks hasn’t had many hits recently. I’m not sure anyone has much to say about “Kung Fu Panda 4” or “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.” Sure, 2022’s “Puss In Boots: The Last Wish” made a splash, but for a while, it felt like Dreamworks lost the magical spark it used to have. Seeing the little boy fishing off the moon used to mean something — nostalgia, the feelings of being a child again. 

Folks, writer and director Chris Sanders made the moon mean something again.

You may not know “The Wild Robot”’s Chris Sanders by name, but I can guarantee you have never forgotten the way he has made you feel. His credits are infinite, so I will just list a few: he came up with the original concept for “Bolt,”worked on visuals and script for “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King” and “Mulan,” and directed films like “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Lilo & Stitch.” In the latter, he created and voiced the titular character Stitch. His work is crucial to how our generation sees Disney and Dreamworks animation. I would trust this man with my life — because the stories in his films are part of why I am the way I am today. 

I don’t think voice actors ever get enough credit for their work — and Sanders would likely agree.

The titular character Roz is voiced by the incredible Lupita Nyong’o. She gets to do some fantastic voice work in this movie, and I can’t imagine Roz being voiced by anyone else. As this robot — who is supposed to be emotionless — learns to live throughout the film, her voice changes. It becomes more fluid, more gentle, less robotic, more human. It’s a beautiful thing to see play out.

Kit Connor of “Heartstopper” fame voices the orphaned runt Brightbill. I might be a little biased in that I am a known lover of Connor’s work, but the world has seen just the beginning of his talents. He has a 100% track record of making me cry over every project he is in. Yes, he is playing a talking goose in this movie, but somehow the most relatable and emotional goose in all of cinema.

The supporting cast is also stacked, with fun Fink the fox voiced by Pedro Pascal, Mark Hamill voicing the big bad bear Thorn, Catherine O’Hara voicing the opossum mother Pinktail, Ving Rhames as the falcon flight instructor Thunderbolt, Bill Nighy as the goose mentor Longneck and Stephanie Hsu as the sassy retrieval robot Vontra. If this were a live-action film, this cast would be receiving much more praise than they are now. I will just have to make googly eyes at the Toronto International Film Festival red carpet press and Letterboxd videos by myself. 

I will defend animated films until I die, but I will let director Guillermo del Toro — who spoke on the topic when accepting the Academy Award for Best Animated Film for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” — say it more eloquently: “Animation is not a genre for kids. It’s a medium for art, it’s a medium for film and I think animation should stay in the conversation.” 

“The Wild Robot” feels like a shoo-in win for Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards. It’s up against some other stellar possible nominees like “Inside Out 2,” “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” “Piece by Piece,” “Flow” and “Memoir of a Snail” — but I’m not sure I need to see most of those movies to know which one is going to take home the Oscar.

Are my hopes too high in thinking that it could be nominated for Best Picture? Could it reach the heights of iconic films like “Toy Story 3,” “Up” and “Beauty and the Beast?” If Chris Sanders can do it once with “Beauty and the Beast,” he can do it again with “The Wild Robot.”

So, to all the people I recommend films to who say, “I don’t want to watch that one because it’s animated,” — GROW UP! Or should I say, let yourself be young again. You are missing out on just as much — and maybe even more — art, emotion and tears as a live-action film.

This movie is about a lot of things. It’s about parenthood. It’s about learning to love from your heart despite how the world has told you how to feel. It’s about becoming more than what you were made to be.
It’s about not knowing where you belong and finding the people — or animals — who teach you how to fly.