The Wild Robot

Or: Nature and Nurture

I am not a person, dear reader, who cries easily. Dead lovers, foiled dreams, all these leave me dry eyed. But my two reliable triggers that can wrench my stiff upper lip to trembling is proud parent stories and scenes where little woodland creatures come together to save each other, and the Wild Robot offers plenty of both. So imagine me squinting angrily through my onion smote eyes as I type these words.

Based on the book by Peter Brown, we begin with a robot, Rozzum 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o), washing up on an uninhabited island in the pacific northwest. Unable to find a customer to give it tasks, even after teaching itself the language of the local animals, “Roz” accidentally allows a gosling to imprint upon her, thereby providing herself with an impossible task: motherhood. With help of local fox Fink (Pedro Pascal) and a passel of other skeptical woodland creatures, she must raise the gosling and teach him to fly before his coming migration, all the while wondering what awaits her in the place she was originally bound for.

To begin with the animation is gorgeous. The glories of the island and how they clash and then blend with Roz’s utility (great big happy memories of Castle in The Sky) let the eye delight and the spirit sour. It performs that small miracle of seeing our world through fresh eyes (I dare you to think the same about Canada geese formations after). The plot though paired a little close to the bone in the first 20 minutes, blossoms into a humorous and heartfelt meditation on love and care, and working together, good messages for all ages. It starts to spark with the arrival of Catherine O’Hara as a beleaguered opossum and further furry luminaries such as Bill Nighy as Longneck, a goose elder, Matt Berry as an artistic angry beaver, and Stephanie Hsu, excelling as she always does with villains as chipper as they are menacing.

Nyong’o herself nails Roz’s robotisisms without over doing the disjointedness, just as the film is truly good for all ages, never overdoing childishness or adult wisecrackery but simply telling a good story with heart. It’s gorgeous, touching, and smart. We all laughed, we all cried, we all relished the touch of that wild thing in all of us.