I had a strange angle during my Toronto International Film Festival screening of director Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot. I don’t mean that I brought a particularly special perspective on the movie with me into the theater; I mean I literally had a strange angle viewing the screen. The world premiere of the new DreamWorks Animation release was held at Roy Thomson Hall (typically a concert venue), and I was seated in a balcony off to the left of the stage – meaning that I was looking down and to the side.
It struck me as an odd way to watch a movie as soon as I sat down, and that feeling lingered into the opening minutes after the auditorium lights dimmed. The impact was ultimately short lived. As I watched the story of ROZZUM unit 7134, the titular Wild Robot voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, I was so enraptured that I probably could have watched it upside-down without issue.
The Wild Robot is based on the series of books of the same name by author Peter Brown, and it’s a film that is as hilarious as it is both heartfelt and beautiful. There’s a bluntness to its comedic sensibilities that is laugh-out-loud funny, the journeys of the characters are wonderful, and the animation is striking and inventive. It rockets you across the emotional spectrum while wowing with its style.
The aforementioned ROZZUM unit 7134, eventually known simply as “Rozz,” washes up on an island and is quick to follow its main program: find a task, and complete it. The robot is quick to alienate the population of animals with its aggressiveness, and learning how to translate their languages doesn’t immediately help, but things ironically start to change when Rozz does something terrible: it lands in a nest, killing a goose and breaking a number of eggs.
One of the eggs ends up being undamaged, and Rozz becomes dedicated to protecting it. When the gosling, a runt named Brightbill (Kit Connor), hatches, a helpful opossum named Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara) explains that the robot must feed the bird and teach it to both fly and swim so that he can migrate before the winter. Partnering with Fink (Pedro Pascal), a fox who initially teams with the protagonist with exploitation in mind, Rozz works to raise Brightbill so that he can survive his first trip off the island.
The movie is for all audiences, but one of its best qualities is that it has a dark sense of humor that manages to be both shocking and delightful. The movie doesn’t tap dance around the concept of death, as life on the island is quite literally eat or be eaten. To give you a sense of this, there’s one point where Pinktail identifies herself as a mother of seven… but then quickly changes that number to six after an off-screen chomping sound.
It’s about more than just being comedically morbid, however. The Wild Robot has jokes about death, but the audience is laughing while simultaneously understanding the high stakes of the story. If Rozz can’t help Brightbill overcome his genetic shortcomings and not only learn to fly but have the endurance to travel long distances, nature will not spare him. Given the incredible sweetness in the relationship between the parent and child, you become invested in not seeing that happen.
That core bond in the film is magnificent, with Lupita Nyong’o and Kit Connor delivering performances that will swell and break your heart, but you also end up caring about all the fauna they have as neighbors – the voice cast not only including the great talents of Pedro Pascal and Catherine O’Hara, but also Bill Nighy as the leader of the goose migration, Matt Berry as a beaver tirelessly trying to gnaw through the largest tree on the island, Ving Rhames as falcon enlisted as Brightbill’s flying instructor, and Mark Hamill as the least friendly creature on the island: a massive grizzly bear.
With an aesthetic reminiscent of a painting come to life, fur and feathers having the texture of brushstrokes, The Wild Robot is enrapturing from the start as a couple of otters find Rozz in a broken crate that has washed up on the island’s shore. In addition to the style making you want to reach out and pet every wild fuzzy creature (regardless of temperament), the physicality of the titular character is outstanding. Rozz’s construction is constantly whirling and spinning with a combination of quick reflexes and her body instantly adjusting to her surroundings, and it’s a wonder (the environment visually taking its toll over the course of the story is also a powerful tool in cultivating affection for the protagonist).
Audiences will have to wait to see some of the best titles from the Toronto International Film Festival this year. Director Edward Berger’s phenomenal Conclave isn’t set to arrive in theaters until November, the excellent Florence Pugh-Andrew Garfield romance We Live In Time won’t be out until next month, and Mike Flanagan’s fantastic Stephen King adaptation The Life Of Chuck is still looking for a distributor. The Wild Robot, however, is heading into wide release on September 27, and it may be one of the best things you see on the big screen this fall.