Matt Goldberg’s review published on Letterboxd:
To rewind the clock to the late 90s/early 00s, there were really only two major animation studios: Pixar and DreamWorks Animation. Pixar received all the acclaim and adoration as it delivered stories perfectly calibrated to tug at your heartstrings. DreamWorks, meanwhile, used Shrek as its template for success, emphasizing comedy and pop culture rather than trying to land an emotional crescendo. However, in 2010, there was a major deviation when DreamWorks released How to Train Your Dragon, a film from Lilo & Stitch directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, that was more emotionally rich and uplifting than anything the studio typically produced. If not for Toy Story 3 almost killing all of its characters in a trash incinerator before sending them off to a new owner, there would likely be no question about the year’s strongest animated film.
Fourteen years later and Sanders is back at DreamWorks, this time directing solo. With his latest film, The Wild Robot, Sanders has out-Pixar’d Pixar. While the film is unlikely to unseat Inside Out 2 for the highest-grossing animated film of all time, there is no question Sanders and the talented creatives at DreamWorks Animation have far exceeded the emotional impact of Pixar’s popular sequel. The Wild Robot is an unabashedly earnest story of motherhood and community that draws inspiration not only from How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo & Stitch but also combines other robots that made you emotional including The Iron Giant, WALL-E, and Baymax. It’s to Sanders’ credit that the film still feels original and unique rather than a machine cobbled together from better parts.
Full review over at Decoding Everything.
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