IronWatcher’s review published on Letterboxd:
Watched in the cinema (149th visit in 2024)
It seems as if the success of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" in 2018 has encouraged the big Hollywood animation studios to leave the perfect recreation of reality to one side for a while and instead go all out artistically again. The makers behind "The Wild Robot" are also following this trend in their adaptation of Peter Brown's three-part children's book series, with the backgrounds in particular being inspired by Impressionism. As the team themselves say, they wanted to merge a forest like Hayao Miyazaki's with the art of Claude Monet and bring it to life. An undertaking that takes some getting used to at first, but the beauty of the whole is undeniable.
However, this artistic aspect is likely to play less of a role for the majority of the (underage) target audience. What matters to them is whether the story, the humor and the emotions work. For the most part, it does. Director Chris Sanders sets off a firework of slapstick, especially at the beginning, when Robo protagonist Roz - spoken with a lot of heart and sensitivity by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o - naively tries to get a good rating from the animals. Many of the animals have of course been trivialized compared to reality, but it is made unmistakably clear that they live in the wild, where for most of them it's "eat or be eaten". "Awww" and "Aaaah!" are very close together.
After this wild and chaotic start for Roz, the movie calms down and becomes a nod to parenthood. Like new moms and dads, Roz has to figure out how to raise a tiny living being - without any pre-programmed information or instruction manual to fall back on. This section is particularly cute thanks to the baby chick.
Of course, no one stays cute forever and because the plot also revolves around a trip to the south, the movie takes a huge leap forward in time at one point. This doesn't really help the flow of the story, as the action is then split across several locations and Roz is increasingly pushed into the background. Also, Longneck, a griffon voiced by Bill Nighy, who Roz is supposed to have known for a long time, suddenly appears on the scene. This is pure assertion, as Longneck was never an issue before.
You can feel that shortcuts were taken in order to pack as much as possible from the original and a few more spectacular action scenes into the movie. Less would have been more here, as the movie feels overloaded and extremely hectic. But even if the landing isn't entirely successful, "The Wild Robot" still reaches heights that other animated films can only dream of, thanks to the way it's made and the heart-warming title character.
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