'The Wild Robot' Review (2024)

Chris Sanders' gorgeous and moving adventure dramedy, with a superb Lupita Nyong'o performance, is exactly what a DreamWorks Animation movie should be.

The Wild Robot (2024)
102 minutes
rated PG for action/peril and… oh shit… the dreaded “thematic elements.”
A DreamWorks Animation production
Opening in domestic theaters, courtesy of Universal, on the week of September 27

Written and directed by Chris Sanders
Produced by Jeff Hermann
Based on the novel by Peter Brown
Edited by Mary Blee
Music by Kris Bowers
Starring - Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O'Hara, Matt Berry and Ving Rhames

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot knocked the socks off of audiences at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival to the point where there’s chatter that it might win this year’s “Audience Award.” Considering that the winner of that award has often gone on to (since 2008 at least) get a Best Picture nomination (American Fiction, Jojo Rabbit, La La Land and The Silver Linings Playbook, among others) or outright win Best Picture at the Oscars (Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, etc.), I’d be amused to watch that happen if only for how it messes with the Oscar punditry industrial complex. It would be hard enough to factor in that development if it were a Pixar toon, let alone… shudder… a DreamWorks Animation movie.

The Wild Robot, based on Peter Brown’s book, is precisely the kind of film DWA should be making. That’s especially true as it attempts to stand out from Illumination, with both under the Comcast/Universal umbrella. It’s a rousing adventure and heartfelt dramatic fantasy, filled with earned laughs via the most unapologetically macabre humor I can remember in an all-ages animated feature. The picture about a worker robot who becomes a reluctant caretaker to a baby gosling after she accidentally kills his family is as open and honest about the cruelty of nature and the inevitability of death as any mainstream toon since the first Ice Age. It’s upfront and matter-of-fact about the mortality of its central characters, even amid a lively and charming visual delight that remembers to be a dramedy rather than a zany knee-slapper.

That’s no shade on The Boss Baby, but DreamWorks has mostly shied away from the kind of “earn that PG, dammit” animated films that were initially its stock and trade. The “darker, gritter” Disney competition, which started with Antz (an ultraviolent Woody Allen comedy) and Prince of Egypt (which told its “Exodus” story with more emotional pathos and nuance than any number of live-action incarnations, quickly gave way to zanier, less grounded films inspired by the (earned) success of Shrek and Madagascar while sometimes forgetting that Shrek 2 was a stunningly honest romantic comedy about the challenges of marital compromise. Even while occasionally knocking it out of the park with How to Train Your Dragon or Kung Fu Panda 2, DWA became stereotyped as the lesser, kid-friendly cartoon studio.

In the summer of 2012, Brave was dinged by critics proclaiming that it was “merely DreamWorks-level good.” Not helping was the narrative that the more dramatic How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Kung Fu Panda 2 (their two best films and both of which were robbed at the Oscars) were disappointments via grossing less domestically than their predecessors even as they each topped $600 million worldwide. The notion that DWA was wrong to make more adventurous animated dramedies, which might even make the kids tear up (I often joke that a DWA toon makes kids cry while a Pixar toon makes parents weep), led to far lighter and less dramatic installments in those franchises. This concurrently signaled a reluctance to make comparatively challenging fare. The Wild Robot is a step in the right direction.

The story isn’t a revelation, coming off as a fair-play hybrid of Ice Age and The Iron Giant. Written and directed by Sanders (who co-helmed the first How to Train Your Dragon and directed Lilo & Stitch), it’s an oft-told tale well told. Lupita Nyong’o is spectacular, but when is she not? The unique animation looks like a mix of watercolors and (in a way that inexplicably works) that sharp saturation and skewed tint you get when you watch a VHS copy of a VHS copy. The narrative tells what you’d assume to be its entire story in the first two acts, leaving a final third filled with often unexpected delights. It’s moving and mournful, not oppressively so, and will probably “get you” whether you’re watching your kids grow up or your parents sundown.

I hope The Wild Robot can be a rare success for a toon that is neither a sequel nor based upon a popular IP (Super Mario Bros., The Grinch, etc.). Universal is doing the work. That it’s set to be the last DreamWorks film animated entirely in-house casts a slight pall over the notion of DWA rediscovering its groove (although I hope that most of the work for the majority of productions will indeed remain in-studio). It’s their best “non-sequel” offering since at least Abominable, which tanked ($185 million globally on a $75 million budget) five years ago, if not How to Train Your Dragon in 2010. It’s the kind of sweeping emotional adventure dramedy that DWA should be making alongside the (equally valid) likes of Over the Hedge, Trolls: World Tour and Home.

There’s a certain irony in The Wild Robot’s story about a robot that chooses to be something other than her official function. That’s been the theme for almost every DWA toon, from Antz to Kung Fu Panda to The Bad Guys, all stories about underdog protagonists (a supervillain who’d rather be a superhero, a snail who wants to be a race car, zoo animals who’d rather live in the wild, etc.) who struggle with wanting to do something different than their assigned task or presumed destiny. If it succeeds, and that’s a big “if,” it can be a reminder that DWA can be more than Disney-lite or Pixar Jr. DreamWorks can remake itself as a studio where films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish are no longer the exception to the rule.