by Maxine Ocampo
Earlier this year, DreamWorks Animation released The Wild Robot in theaters. This critically acclaimed film is directed by Chris Sanders, a filmmaker with multiple animated movie successes under his belt like Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon. The Wild Robot is no exception, as it quickly became a box office hit worldwide.
After hearing rave reviews from friends and critics, I had high expectations and tried my best to see this film in theaters. When I finally found the time to watch it, it’s safe to say I wasn’t disappointed at all. Within the span of an hour and 42 minutes, I experienced a roller coaster of emotions as I watched a robot make a life for itself on an unfamiliar island while raising a baby goose into adulthood.
Every aspect of The Wild Robot meshed perfectly together, from voice acting to the animation to the overall cinematic storytelling. Don’t even get me started on the beautiful soundtrack. For my review of this film, however, I’m going to focus on the following aspects that stood out to me the most: the cinematic storytelling and voice acting.
To put it lightly, the voice acting cast for The Wild Robot is phenomenally talented. When you have remarkable actresses and actors like Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Kit Connor, and many more working on the same project, you know you’ve struck gold. Among this cast, Nyong’o did a fantastic job voicing the main protagonist, Roz, as she managed a perfect blend of robotic stiffness and motherly warmth in her performance. Connor was excellent at portraying the curious Brightbill, the gosling trying to figure out his place in the world after being raised by Roz. Pascal did great by adding a certain charm and humility to Fink, the sly fox that found a home with Roz and Brightbill.
As for the cinematic storytelling, The Wild Robot is a textbook example of the “show, don’t tell” concept in filmmaking. Each scene, every moment of character development, and so on are expertly executed from a visual stance to the point where you can take any random frame from the movie and write a 500-word essay about it. Even the opening sequence alone can be its own video essay. I would equate this high-level of visual storytelling to Disney-Pixar’s WALL-E, where the lack of dialogue isn’t a detriment to the moviegoing experience, but rather enhances it.
I absolutely loved this film (surprising, I know). Not only did it meet my expectations, but it blew them out of the water. I laughed, cried, and contemplated the meaning of life multiple times while watching this masterpiece. From the moment the DreamWorks logo appeared on screen to the final credits sequence rolling by, The Wild Robot captivated me through and through. It easily became one of my favorite DreamWorks movies, and even one of my favorite animated movies, of all time. 11/10 will watch again and again.
