Review: The Wild Robot
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If you had told me ten years ago that a movie about a robot raising a goose would have me ugly crying in the cinema while trying to hide that fact so I don’t freak out my two stepsons, I would have told you that’s an incredibly specific scenario to predict (and one hell of a run-on sentence to boot).
Alas, that was the EXACT situation I found myself in on what should have been a simple school holiday trip to the movies with the kids.
Roz is the aforementioned Wild Robot, and she has been designed with one thing in mind: to complete tasks assigned to her by humans. Mid-transport to her lazy people of the future, she ends up stranded on an island with no human life. A bit of a problem for Roz, as not only is there no one to give her tasks, but there is also no electricity. As a cynical moviegoer, I was happy to have that potential pothole averted as it’s made clear that she runs on solar. Roz promptly gets to recalibrating to her new surroundings and returns to finding a task.
That task presents itself in the form of an orphaned gosling who imprints upon the first thing he sees, Roz. And with that one moment we are off to the ‘get the tissues’ races. The Wild Robot is not just an incredible story with breathtaking animation and more than a few funny moments. It’s a dead-set unforgiving emotional talking to. The filmmakers have decided that you will sit, and you will learn about the feelings that exist inside all of us.
I won’t spoil the whole movie with this review, but the journey that it takes you on is predictable enough. Roz learns about emotions; a gosling becomes a goose and Pedro Pascal is a fox. I don’t mean that as a comment on his obvious good looks, he literally plays a fox. But the way the audience is taken to the final destination is anything but played out. It’s a fresh take on this kind of story. It’s one that the world is in desperate need of seeing at the moment.
Lupita Nyong’o plays Roz and while we already know that she is one of the most talented actresses of our generation, to have your heartstrings played so expertly by just her voice, is next-level skill. The rest of the cast is fantastic too – Kit Conner provides the teenage goose Brightbill with a level of earnest vulnerability that we can all identify with. As you might be starting to grasp, I don’t have a bad thing to say about this movie. Well, if I did, maybe it’s this…
I was not prepared for the deep dive introspective journey The Wild Robot is. It touches on so many different aspects of humanity, all through the lens of a giant robot – like what family means, and how it can be something you never anticipated. That we all feel like imposters sometimes, but we still try our best anyway. That we are not unique in feeling the confusion life can bring and nor are we alone in facing it. Because at the core of this movie is a simple message: kindness is a survival instinct.
But now, unlike myself, you are prepared for all of that. So go see The Wild Robot. It will be good for your soul.
The author saw The Wild Robot as a guest of Limelight Cinemas. Imagery courtesy of Limelight Cinemas.
