The Wild Robot (2024) Review: A Machine Learns to Mother

Is The Wild Robot worth watching?

Yes. The Wild Robot is one of the finest animated films of recent years, a painterly, witty and genuinely moving story about a machine that learns what it means to care for someone. Chris Sanders balances slapstick with real emotion, and the animation looks like a storybook come to life. The small reservation is that the story’s final act adds a more conventional action plot that feels less distinctive than the rest, but it barely dents the whole.

What is The Wild Robot about?

The Wild Robot begins when a service robot, ROZZUM unit 7134, or Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), washes up on a remote island after a shipwreck. Programmed to complete tasks for human customers, she finds herself surrounded by wild animals who regard her as a monster.

When an accident leaves a gosling orphaned, Roz takes on an unexpected task: raising the chick, Brightbill (Kit Connor), and preparing him to swim, fly and join his flock’s migration before winter. Helping her, often reluctantly, is a cunning fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), while Bill Nighy voices an elderly goose. Sanders wrote and directed this adaptation of Peter Brown’s children’s novel for DreamWorks Animation. The American film is in English, runs 102 minutes and is rated PG. It earned three Academy Award nominations, including Best Animated Feature.

Animation that looks painted by hand

The film’s visual style is its first great pleasure. DreamWorks blends computer animation with a painterly texture, so forests, meadows and skies look as if they were brushed onto canvas. Light shifts beautifully across the seasons, and the island feels lush, wild and alive. Roz herself is a lovely design: sleek and functional at first, gradually scuffed and overgrown as she becomes part of the landscape.

The action is inventive and often very funny. Roz’s early attempts to communicate with animals, her awkward efforts at parenting and Fink’s schemes provide energetic slapstick, while Sanders shows a keen sense of comic timing. The film is also unafraid of nature’s harshness; predators, weather and death are part of the island’s life, handled with honesty rather than sentimentality.

Nyong’o gives a robot a soul

Lupita Nyong’o’s voice performance is the film’s emotional core. She begins with a bright, efficient, customer-service tone and gradually allows warmth, humour and uncertainty to creep in as Roz changes. It is a subtle transformation, and it makes the robot’s growing love for Brightbill completely believable.

Kit Connor gives Brightbill an endearing mix of insecurity and pluck, and Pedro Pascal is a delight as Fink, whose sly cynicism gradually softens. Bill Nighy lends gravitas as a wise old goose. Kris Bowers’s soaring score, one of the film’s Oscar nominations, lifts the flying sequences into something close to rapture.

Where the story becomes more familiar

The first two acts, focused on Roz’s life on the island, are so fresh that the final section’s turn toward bigger, more conventional peril feels slightly generic by comparison. It is exciting and well staged, but it introduces conflicts that feel imported from other animated adventures rather than growing from the island’s own story. A few of the supporting animals also blur together amid the busy ensemble. These are minor reservations for a film this accomplished.

Who should watch The Wild Robot?

This is ideal for families, especially those with children around six and up, and for adults who appreciate thoughtful animation. The PG rating reflects moments of peril, animal predation and some sad scenes that could upset very young viewers. At under two hours, it is a comfortable length for a family movie night, and its themes of adoptive parenthood, kindness and letting go resonate across generations.

If it touches you, these make wonderful follow-ups:

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Spielberg’s classic about a stranded outsider and the bond that grows around it.
• The Lion King, another animated story set in the animal kingdom about family, growing up and finding your place.

The verdict

The Wild Robot is a gorgeous, funny and heartfelt animated film that turns a simple story into a profound reflection on parenthood and kindness. Its last act is more conventional than the rest, but its visuals, performances and emotional honesty make it one of the best family films of its decade.

Rating: 4.5/5