Wild Robot (2024)

 

A crated robot helper is washed ashore on an uninhabited island after a storm. Accidentally turned on by an animal it runs amok on the island scaring the animal as it tries to find someone to help. After learning to speak the animals language it tries to help again. After killing a family of geese, Roz ends up raising the only surviving goose with the help of a fox.

WILD ROBOT is a gorgeous film that is going to win the hearts of many. It's a good film with a great voice cast (none of which are over used) and some truly glorious sequences that are among the best ever put on film. At the same time the tone is all over place (it flops from Looney Tunes to very serious at random) and the film emotionally ends 2/3 of the way in but it still keeps going. 

I want to say again I really like the film but all this talk coming out of the Toronto Film Festival of an instant classic and destined to get a Best Picture nomination is a bit much. Give me five years on the classic bit, and as for the Best Picture nomination in addition to best Animated Film, uh, no.

While I like that the film deals with darkness- characters DIE- the film, especially in the early part of the film doesn't know if it's going to be a jokey film or something more serious with death and destruction mixing with humor. I mean characters eat each other and jokes are made. 

As for the plotting, the film builds to a crescendo and then keeps going. We get an odd winter sequence followed by an action sequence full of robots with ray guns and a finale that had me orchestrating it in my seat "now this happens" followed by what the lines of dialog that were word for word what was said on screen. 

But the voice cast makes it work. Lupita Nyong'o is note perfect and breaks your heart as Roz. It's a glorious piece of work. Additionally some of the big names, say Ving Rhames and Bill Nighy come in and grab you with their first line. Rhames doesn't come in until the glorious beyond words flying sequence but he instantly sells it.

The animation is glorious, and some of the best I've ever seen. The animators must have been left to do what they wanted and it shows in character motion and sequences that are unlike anything you've seen before. 

The good over whelms the bad and as such  WILD ROBOT is recommended.

(By way of an aside, and because I don't know where to put this and feel I have to say it, there is an animated film version of the novel KENSUKE'S KINGDOM which recently opened in the UK and will open in the US in October which tells a thematically similar story, that is emotionally satisfying, and ends at the similar moment where WILD ROBOT should have. Be warned there are no robots, however there are cute animals and some bad men which result in moments that mirror the death of Bambi's mother)