Posted in: Dreamworks, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies | Tagged: the wild robot

The Wild Robot Review: A Heartbreaking and Beautiful Masterpiece

The Wild Robot proves what this medium can do when the right people are given the right material and the freedom to create art, not content.

The Wild Robot hits every single emotional beat. It is beautifully animated, effortlessly funny, and breaks your heart.

Director: Chris Sanders
Summary: After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.

In terms of quality, no one is more inconsistent regarding animation these days than Dreamworks. They put out these absolutely insane films that you cannot even believe exist, and they turned out to be amazing. Then they turn around and release something that either doesn't hit at all or is terrible. We expect consistent quality from Pixar and nothing from Illumination [don't @ me], but you never know what you're getting with Dreamworks. However, it was clear The Wild Robot was going to be different from, quite literally, the first teaser trailer released half a year ago. It's not often a trailer that gets you right in the feels, but this one did, and it set high expectations for the final film. The Wild Robot meets those expectations effortlessly.

As an art form, animation has always been an incredible medium through which to explore so many different ways to tell stories, but this feels like a story made for animation to the point that you might be surprised to hear this is based on a book. The Wild Robot doesn't waste a second of its runtime and starts about as close to in medias res as we've seen in a while. There isn't any build-up; we're just dropped on this island the same way ROZ is, and now it's time to learn how to adapt, survive, and thrive.

It's not pulling any punches, either. The Wild Robot isn't here to hold your hand and try to tell you that everything and everyone gets along happily in the wild like this is a Disney movie. The movie is very upfront about one of its major themes: the idea of your base nature and how that impacts your place in the ecosystem. The predator and prey dynamics, who makes it from childhood to adulthood, and who lives through harsh winters. However, even though the doesn't hold anyone's hand, it isn't such a large concept that kids won't understand. Zootopia used the idea of the predator/prey dynamic to its advantage. While The Wild Robot is much more realistic about it, it's presented in a way that everyone in the audience will understand.

The film explores other themes, but to get into all of them would be explaining the film, and we don't want to do that because you need to see it. Storywise, it's very basic, and for a large portion of the film, there really isn't an antagonist aside from nature itself. The final act does bring in a more direct "bad guy" that can feel a bit perfunctory, but it leads to a final confrontation and scenes that will break your cold, dead heart, so accept it. This is one of those animated films that will probably make you cry, so get ready for it. It also might be a level of sadness that kids could have a little bit of a hard time with, but they don't linger on the sadness too long, so, in the kid's minds, "there isn't any reason to worry that the sad movie is going to stay sad."

The Wild Robot is one of those movies that comes along and will stay with you long after you see it. You'll be thinking about this film and the beautifully animated and executed moments for days, weeks, and months to come. It's proof that when given the right material and the right people working behind the scenes, Dreamworks can create genre-defining films. There are two absolutely insanely beautiful and near-flawless pieces of art in movie theaters right now, and both of them show just what this medium is capable of when the right people are given the right material and the freedom to create art, not content.

The Wild Robot

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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10/10

The Wild Robot hits every single emotional beat. It is beautifully animated, effortlessly funny, and breaks your heart.

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