The Wild Robot review – a mov­ing eco­log­i­cal parable

The fil­mog­ra­phy of ani­ma­tion direc­tor Chris Sanders is full of unlike­ly friend­ships between man and beast: Lilo & Stitch and How To Train Your Drag­on, (both co-direct­ed with Dean DeBlois) in par­tic­u­lar, the lat­ter using fan­ta­sy as an alle­go­ry for con­ser­va­tion. The Wild Robot plays like a lit­tle twist on this, in that it’s express­ly con­cerned with the inevitable end­point of human com­mer­cial­ism, by study­ing that from the view­point of animals. 

Iron­i­cal­ly, those ani­mals slow­ly human­ise its epony­mous char­ac­ter, a house­hold serv­er robot named ​“Roz” (Lupi­ta Nyong’o, excel­lent here) who crash lands on their island. In her blun­der­ing to accli­ma­tise to her new sur­round­ings, she acci­den­tal­ly crush­es a goose nest, and ends up car­ing for the last sur­viv­ing gosling. The ear­ly act of the film is laced with moments of dark ani­mal king­dom com­e­dy as Roz fix­ates on her ​“task” of teach­ing her adopt­ed child Bright­bill how to fly before the migra­tion, which has become mud­dled thanks to cli­mate change. 

It’s a mov­ing alle­go­ry for par­ent­hood, even with its unlucky prox­im­i­ty to the sim­i­lar­ly themed Ultra­man Ris­ing. The Wild Robot, how­ev­er, takes on mes­sag­ing about the effect of human cap­i­tal on the envi­ron­ment, which goes a long way to set it apart. 

Per­haps even more than that, the film impress­es for its looks. One of the best touch­es is how Sanders and co. use 2D, paint­ed back­grounds in con­cert with ren­dered envi­ron­ments, as if we’re see­ing a phys­i­cal sound­stage with a back­drop. It feels like a minor detail, but it’s also essen­tial. That clear evi­dence of a human touch makes every­thing feel nat­ur­al, which posi­tions Roz as an invad­er with her dig­i­tal pol­ish and unnat­ur­al motion through her joint­less limbs; even­tu­al­ly her very ren­der­ing changes with her devel­op­ing per­son­al­i­ty, her look as a moss-cov­ered robot care­tak­er feel­ing more than a lit­tle inspired by Miyazaki’s Cas­tle in the Sky. The film is full of these expres­sive touch­es, such as a beau­ti­ful sequence of more prim­i­tive ani­ma­tion which employs child­like illus­tra­tions for a bed­time sto­ry. (It also feels bit­ter­sweet – accord­ing to online sources, the stu­dio is plan­ning to scale back its in-house work). 

For all its cre­ativ­i­ty, the writ­ing can some­times feel rushed, lean­ing on cliché in order to get to the next major plot beat. One of the worst cul­prits is a piv­otal scene over­played by a Bill Nighy-voiced char­ac­ter that only seems to speak in moti­va­tion­al quotes (deroga­to­ry), cou­pled with an insert song full of rather painful­ly on-the-nose lyrics (a lot of the score is sim­i­lar­ly heavy-hand­ed). The rest the film moves with an admirably light touch, treat­ing moments of silence as sacred, which makes the heavy-hand­ed parts stand out more. 

The Wild Robot is inno­v­a­tive in many ways but per­haps too tra­di­tion­al in oth­ers; some moments bring it back to feel­ing like the medi­an Dream­Works film, despite its many flash­es of bril­liance. Still, it’s a mov­ing eco­log­i­cal para­ble, and its visu­als are an encour­ag­ing con­tin­u­a­tion of the gen­er­al trend in 3D ani­ma­tion towards graph­ic tex­tures and away from the restraints of real­ism, even if it’s some­thing as small as a leaf being rep­re­sent­ed by an abstract splotch of paint.