Anthony's Film Review - The Wild Robot (2024)

A highly original story that is so heartwarming and sweet...

When I saw the trailer for The Wild Robot, an animated film about a robot learning to live in nature, I thought to myself, "What a creative concept!" It turns out that it's actually based on a children's book by Peter Brown. So this review of the movie The Wild Robot comes from someone who has not read the book. But if the movie is any indication of what the book is like, I really give Peter Brown credit for this story. The movie is one I enjoyed very much.

The first scene of the movie dives right into the title character's adventure without any direct explanation of what kind of robot it is and how it got into this natural landscape in the first place. We do see that the robot comes out of a broken box. Maybe the container was airborne before landing here, like it fell out of a plane? Then the robot wakes up because one animal presses its power button. Based on its verbal utterances, we learn that the robot, named Roz (voiced wonderfully by Lupita Nyong'o), is a helper robot designed to assist humans with various tasks. Roz gradually discovers her strange surroundings just as we gradually learn more about Roz.

Even without a clear story in the first several minutes, it is so joyful to watch Roz interact with various animals, including a fox, a bear, and an opossum. Animals will certainly respond to Roz the way they would based on their imnate instincts. Meanwhile, Roz responds to the animals according to the functions she is programmed with. It really is like seeing two sets of species acting in accordance with their inner nature, even if one species is artificial.

There's more. Both the robot and the animals have learning capabilities. As a result, they can change behavior to achieve benefit, in ways that depend on the circumstances they face. Over time, Roz and the animals influence and impact each other in profound ways. This is clearly evident when Roz watches a goose egg hatch, the baby bird sees Roz as his mother, and Roz develops an emotional attachment with it.

I should be clear. There is a story in The Wild Robot. The semblance of one simply begins a little later than you may expect. But throughout this film, we are witnessing animal and robot behavior in a sensible symbiotic relationship. We eventually do care about the characters, particularly the goose once it grows up and Roz after she has acquired so much new knowledge from nature. As the movie proceeds to its climax, we ultimately what will happen to the key characters, especially Roz. Will she eventually return to the factory that built her or will she spend her remaining days in the wild that becomes her new home?

Overall, The Wild Robot is an incredibly sweet and heartwarming movie. It is undoubtedly one of the best movies of 2024 in my opinion. I will even go as far as to say that it is one of the best animated films, if not the best, to ever come out of DreamWorks. I watched it with my heart tugged the whole way. I was smiling much of the way, with momentary laughs or tearjerking moments here and there. If this is your kind of movie, definitely see this one.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about The Wild Robot, visit the Internet Movie Database.