My condensed review: "Excellent animation, but very "meh" story/characters."

Very...disappointing honestly, was hoping this would be something special. I personally feel a little deceived by the film's marketing (and the fact that it has been playing at film festivals recently). To my understanding - I was hoping this was the type of animated film made for both children and adults to enjoy together...but in the end it kind of just felt like a baby movie.

While there is most certainly a lot of talent and craft being poured into the animation style - I have to say that I really did not find much of anything beyond just the art style. Found the main character pretty unlikable, the side characters pretty forgettable, wasn't impressed by any of the voice acting, the writing was pretty juvenile, the jokes were absolute cringe, the score/soundtrack was very cheesy and manipulative, the plot ends up falling into a lot of clichés. This is the kind of kids movie where the good characters are all very, very good - and the bad characters are all very, very bad. Let's all please take a moment to acknowledge that the "main villain" (who comes out of nowhere in the third act) is literally just a watered-down version of GLaDOS from the "Portal" series. There were several moments that were supposedly set up as serious/dramatic moments that felt incredibly comical to me (when the main character literally said "I am a Wild Robot" I nearly burst out laughing in the theater).

This is by no means a bad or terrible movie - it is certainly a crowd-pleaser and I am glad a lot of people seem to be loving (this feels almost tailor-made for the "I watch one or two movies a year" crowd). This is also MILES better than a good majority of the garbage that DreamWorks has released over the year...but I honestly can't say that this is something I would even want to recommend. I will say that the movie gets better in the second half (the first half nearly put me to sleep) - but when the culminating message of the film ends up being: "if we all work together, everything will be fine" it just felt a little difficult to take seriously as an audience member. Overall, a very surface level film from a writing standpoint with some admittedly great animation. To those who seem to love this film, I have to ask: would anyone really care about this movie if it didn't have a great animation style? Sorry everyone! - 5/10.