Toronto 2024 Review: THE WILD ROBOT, Ground-breaking Animation Powers Familiar Family Tale

Alongside Disney, Pixar and Ghibli, Dreamworks is one of the premier animation houses in the world. Although it doesn't quite have the acclaim of the former three, it has churned out a steady stream of hits over the years.

The Wild Robot is their latest film, the solo animation directorial debut of toon impresario Chris Sanders. Per usual industry practice, all of Sanders' prior films -- Lilo And Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon, and The Croods -- were co-directed with other filmmakers.

In its exploration of a sentient robot and its interactions with animals, The Wild Robot recalls Wall-E and Robot Dreams, more ambitious and artistic films. Yet, children and parents of kids might find its familiar contours comforting, if undemanding. Families will likely find the divertissement they seek in the waning days of summer.

Adapted from Peter Brown's popular, eponymous children's picture book, The Wild Robot concerns an AI-powered Robot Roz (Lupita Nyong'o) that is washed onto an island, uninhabited by humans, after a shipping disaster. A domesticated robot designed to make life easy and convenient for humans, it initially finds no purchase among the many wild island animals.

Searching for a directive or a task, it accidentally kills a goose family but saves the last gosling Brightbill (Kit Connor). Roz then decides to adopt the task of raising Brightbill and readying it for migration with the other geese. After this, Roz will finally transmit a distress cycle and location coordinates to its factory so that it can be rescued and refurbished.

The Wild Robot, perhaps due to its source material, often plays like several episodes of a TV show strung together and shown as one. The narrative seems divided into sections that do not so much organically happen causally but as a series of standalone, independent adventures.

The film's standout sequence and best section is the opening chapter, where Roz first arrives on the island. This portion is wordless, as the speech of the wild animals is unintelligible. The silent world-building here is reminiscent of Pixar. In a clever gambit, Roz enters a learning mode where it listens to the wild animals around it for a long time. Then, she is eventually able to decipher their speech, introducing dialog to the film and, it has to be said, more conventionality. 

Other episodes include Brightbill's successful graduation as a member of the migrating geese club, his adventures during flight, an extended sequence showing Roz rescuing a coterie of animals during a snowstorm and the disappointing finale, in which Dreamworks' templatized, unimaginative filmmaking comes to the fore. The Wild Robot proceeds in a slice-of-life mode for the majority of its runtime, without villains, though there are antagonistic figures. This could be considered a more sophisticated form of storytelling in a children's film, letting kids consider the notion that there aren't necessarily good guys and bad guys in real life, just people who see the world differently.

All this changes when the climax introduces a villain out of the blue, a character absent from the rest of the film. The artificiality of this conflict and Vontra's (Stephanie Hsu) over-the-top villainy is dispiriting.

The denouement seems diagrammatically and cynically designed to put the protagonists in peril, push bottoms, and work the viewers' sympathies, pity and tear glands. The Wild Robot largely manages to operate without such compromises for the majority of its duration, and this left turn seems unnecessary and unbecoming in the end.

The Wild Robot does pioneer a new breed of animation that makes for striking visuals. The technique mixes CGI animation with hand-painting to create a hybrid look that is especially arresting in its use of light and textures.

Kris Bowers' score is enthusiastic, though The Wild Robot is a little too reliant on it to generate emotion, something the storytelling is not able to muster up organically. Animations are known for their brevity, often designed as such to accommodate the short attention spans of children. The Wild Robot falls on the longer end of the spectrum. Its storytelling is not as crisp and efficient in the communication of information visually as is common among the exemplars of this medium.

The voice work is enticing, and the message of community and collegiality among animals is valuable for children. The mother-son relationship between Roz and Brightbill will also likely appeal to families and perhaps even move them.

The Wild Robot isn't heady or rarefied but doesn't need to be; it is serviceable entertainment for parents and kids. It will also please animation enthusiasts due to its meaningful advances in the technique and craft of this singular medium.

The film opens wide Friday, September 27, only in movie theaters, via Dreamworks. Visit the official site for more information.