Jonah Naplan   October 6, 2024

“The Wild Robot” is an animated movie with a heart as big as its ambitions. Most films of its caliber could only dream of reaching the visceral and emotional depths it touches and would shy away from drawing anywhere near the themes that percolate throughout. The film is not, unlike its brethren, interested in pandering to any audience. It can be enjoyed just as much by adults as by children. It will surprise you, it will shock you, and it will emotionally rip you to pieces, especially if you’re a parent with young kids hoping that they’ll never grow up. Heck, parents with older children about to leave for college who have grown up will resonate just as greatly. “The Wild Robot” is a machine for empathy, and we’re all its guinea pigs.

Based on the children’s books by Peter Brown, the film takes place on a futuristic planet Earth that is maintained, of course, by robots. A beguiling Lupita Nyong’o voices Rozzum 7314 (or “Roz,” for short), a mechanical assistant programmed to complete any and all tasks she’s assigned. After crash landing on a remote island, Roz immediately begins searching for a master to give her a mission so that she can fulfill her duty before activating a signal and returning back to her home base, a sleek, idyllic metropolis of robots and the human masterminds behind them. While on this island, Roz crosses paths with all its inhabitants, a colorful array of mostly unfriendly creatures who don’t know what to do with Roz’s personhood (which is ironic considering she’s not a person), including a possum named Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara) and her several joeys, a menacing bear named Thorn (Mark Hamill), a beaver named Paddler (Matt Berry)—who spends his days trying to gnaw through the trunk of the biggest tree in the forest—and a mischievous fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who quickly becomes an unlikely friend to Roz as she navigates this uncertain terrain.

Roz doesn’t really find her heart, however, until she falls onto a bird’s nest, squashing the mother and all of her eggs, except for just one. This gosling turns out to be the “runt” of the litter as it hatches in Roz’s steady hands, a curious but clumsy fuzzball named Brightbill (Kit Connor), whom Roz will learn to feed and nurture so that he can grow and migrate someplace warmer when winter arrives. What follows is a mother’s tale, a story about finding a makeshift family in the unlikeliest of places, and a fable about how it sometimes takes an outsider to unite a community. The movie is not just a journey of discovery for Roz, who learns both what her intended purpose is as a robot (there’s even a “Toy Story”-esque scene where she stumbles upon an advertisement for her own model like Buzz Lightyear) and what her purpose is deep inside, but also for all the forest folk who’ve deemed her an intruder or an alien or a freak.

It is, on the surface, sweet and entertaining, with no dull moments and a tenderness that’s deeply felt all the way through. But on the level beyond, it touches a certain emotion that only Pixar and Studio Ghibli’s best have managed to reach in films like “Inside Out,” “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Up,” “Coco,” and “Spirited Away.” The animation and visual deftness on display here is, of course, remarkable, and any singular shot from this movie could be fashioned in a genre hall of fame, but the most impressive feat is undeniably how hard this film tugs at your heartstrings without ever feeling manipulative. I cried two different times because I was hooked on the characters and they had earned my demonstrative tendencies. You might, too, whether it’s because you can personally resonate with how characters are feeling or because they’re just so likable and you want to see them succeed and be happy in each other’s company. There’s art in knowing exactly the right beats to hit in order to maximize an emotional impact and writer-director Chris Sanders pulls no punches.

At just 102 minutes, “The Wild Robot” flies by so quickly you don’t know what’s hit you. Refusing to follow conventional storytelling notions, it jumps into action within the first minute and doesn’t drop the pace until the credits roll. The early scenes have the frenetic energy of the “Spider-Verse” films, while the middle sections deal in the same kinetic multitudes as “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” (another outstanding animated movie about robots and families) in its portentous wails about the future and heartfelt notation on the importance of weirdos uniting in the face of danger. All of its improbable pieces feel appropriate, and each time the movie seems to be going down a rabbit trail, it reveals another piece of its profound self to the viewer, a nuanced and often darkly funny parable that appears so simple on the outside but has a crushing impact the longer it sits with you.

Every thematic piece of “The Wild Robot” comes together seamlessly, between a dynamic score from Kris Bowers and all the voice work from an A-list cast of actors who don’t phone it in like the creators of many of these movies do. Rather, they inject themselves into the characters with aplomb and communicate human emotions you might not expect to come from a bear, a gosling or a possum. The result feels a bit like watching the golden rule in film form or life’s goodness and connection between one soul and another infect a small community.

I learned and rediscovered a lot about myself while watching “The Wild Robot.” It made me appreciate my immediate and extended family more, and gave me a reason to think about the role I play as the eldest born, soon to leave for college in the not-terribly-distant future. The more you sit with it, the more you realize the hidden meanings underneath the facade of a goofy children’s picture. If life was a pizza, then watching “The Wild Robot” is to eat a slice.

Now playing in theaters.