REVIEW: The Wild Robot

I think I must have known that Chris Sanders had another movie on deck, but I guess I had forgotten it was coming out so soon. For whatever reason, when I saw his name at the end of the credits for The Wild Robot, out this weekend, I was caught off guard ... and then realized that it actually explained a lot. The basic premise felt broadly reminiscent of Lilo & Stitch, and there was at least one sequence that definitely recalled How to Train Your Dragon, both of which Sanders co-directed with Dean Deblois (executive producer on this film). With his latest offering for Dreamworks, Sanders cements his position as a titan in the world of animation.

The movie sees ROZ, a shipwrecked robot stranded on an island completely untouched by humans. One would think that such an Eden would be bereft of the squabbles that humans seem so happy to create, but the animals of the island revile this new intruder and put up every fence they have. The only thing on this rock that doesn't hate this giant metal outcast is the newly hatched gosling who imprints on her. ROZ decides that parenting is as good a directive as any, and a relationship takes root that may change more than one world.

So much of the distance travelled, for both Dreamworks specifically and computer animation as a whole, is on display with this film. You can recognize, for example, the footprints of 2000s Dreamworks cynicism in a lot of the humor early on in the film (a baby opossum is mauled offscreen, presumably eaten, only to crawl back to her family, assuring, "don't worry mom, I'm still alive!" to which mother opossum casually responds, "Oh. Yaaaaay ...") but that jadedness only ends up forming the bedrock for the film's larger treatise on rising above our natural programming and doing our part to make the world safer for one another. The film's ultimate landing place is not super obvious from the start, but when you check the math by the end, the balance comes out just the same.

Then there's animation itself. Not a frame of this movie that is anything less than jaw dropping. Long gone are the putty taxidermy days of early computer animation. Everything here looks painted rather than rendered. Even at its most hostile, you just want to let this world spill out over the canvas and wash over you. Adults too scared to see cartoons in theaters will miss out.

Gone also are the days of Dreamworks using celebrity voice talent as a crutch. I hadn't walked in with the cast list memorized. I remembered Lupita Nyong'o was the robot, and Pedro Pascal was somewhere in this bundle. But in staying through the credits and seeing I recognized almost all the names, I had that extra layer of appreciation for the performers whose star persona did not overpower the characters they were breathing life into. Special shoutout to Kit Connor as Brightbill, the gosling at the center of the story.

Anyways, we look forward to seeing Sanders at the Oscars next year, and maybe a little after that too.

--The Professor

Comments

REVIEW: Clayface

James Gunn promised early on that with his new DC Universe, not everything would be for everybody, but there would be something for everybody. I have to assume he means he's eventually going to grant us the first proper superhero musical. (No, I still haven't seen "Joker 2.") But until such a time, James Watkins' new take on superheroes and horror with Clayface is a valid offering just the same. Rising actor, Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harris), is on top of the world, securing his first Oscar nomination, when he has a fatal night of passion with the girlfriend of a lord in the criminal underworld of Gotham. Matt is punished by having his lovely Hollywood face carved up irreparably. Matt's golden ticket to the front of the camera is ruined, and his reputation is smeared. Driven to desperation, Matt seeks out a neuroscientist, Caitlyn Corr (Naomie Ackie), investing in an experimental form of therapy that could recover his...

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

I've heard a lot of back and forth over what the purpose of film is and what we should ask from it. Film as a social amenity kind of has a dual purpose. It's supposed to give the population common ground and find things that people of varying backgrounds and beliefs can unify around. On the other hand, film also creates this detached simulated reality through which we can explore complex and even testing ideas about the contradictions in human existence. In theory, a film can fulfill both functions, but movies exist in a turbulent landscape. It's very rare for a film to try to walk both lanes, and it's even rarer for a film to be embraced upon entry for attempting to do so. Let me explain by describing the premise of one of my favorite movies, Morten Tyldum's 2016 film, Passengers . A key piece of this film ’s plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who premat...

The "Stephen King's IT" Paradox - Can You Ever Go Home Again?

Though I think of myself as putting my heart and soul into this blog, I generally like to keep my offline persona mysterious. This is why I use a pen name and why you’ll never see a picture of my face on this page. But I’ll pull behind the curtain just a little today and share that … I attended my high school reunion not too long ago. I actually ended up attending this reunion twice simply because the first reunion, our “real reunion,” was planned at sort of the last minute and had rather sparse attendance. And so those of us who made it to that resolved to see if we couldn’t pull off something a little more robust, which we did some months later with much more success. And I honestly didn’t mind going twice over. I never actively put any distance between myself and my old pals, but I also never really made any effort to hold onto them after graduating beyond liking their posts on...

How Disney Liberated the Musical Genre

Anytime I’m getting ready for a new musical film, I generally try to put off listening to the soundtrack until after I’ve seen the movie. It’s just my way of ensuring that I experience the narrative in its full context upon its important premiere viewing. Most of the time I’m good about sticking to this, but nowhere is this feat harder than with the arrival of each new Disney musical. I tried really hard with Encanto , but with Lin-Manuel Miranda writing for Disney, what can I say (except "You're Welcome"...) So, why am I talking about Disney musicals? W hen I premiered my Jungle Book essay earlier this year, I decided that going forward I was ready to expand how I talked about Disney. Owing to Disney fans constantly having to justify their fandom, a lot of Disney discourse tends to be purely defensive. Disney fans only ever get to use their platform to try convincing the cool kids that--for the last time!--it's okay for adults without kids to go to...

The Belle Complex

As Disney fandom increasingly moves toward the mainstream, the discussions and questions that travel around the community become increasingly nuanced and diverse. Is the true color of Aurora's dress blue or pink? Is it more fun to sit in the back or the front on Big Thunder Mountain? Is the company's continued emphasis on producing content for Disney+ negatively impacting not only their output but the landscape for theatrical release as a whole? However, on two things, the fandom is eternally united. First, Gargoyles was a masterpiece in television storytelling and should have experienced a much longer run than it did. Second, Belle's prom dress in the 2017 remake was just abominable. While overwhelmingly successful at the box office, the 2017 adaptation is also a bruise for many in the Disney community. Even right out the gate, the film came under fire for a myriad of factors: the auto-tuned soundtrack, Ewan McGregor's flimsy accent, the distracting plot...

Finding Nemo: The Thing About Film Criticism ...

Film is a mysterious thing. It triggers emotional responses in the audience that are as surprising as they are all-encompassing. As a medium, film is capable of painting stunning vistas that feel like they could only come to life behind the silver screen, but many of the most arresting displays on film arise from scenes that are familiar, perhaps even mundanely so. It’s an artform built on rules and guidelines–young film students are probably familiar with principles like the rule of thirds or the Kuleshov effect–but someone tell me the rule that explains why a line like “We’ll always have Paris,” just levels you. There are parts of the film discussion that cannot be anticipated by a formula or a rulebook, and for that we should be grateful. Arrival (2016) But the thing about film–and especially film criticism–is that film critics are not soothsayers. Their means of divining the artis...

My Criminal Father Surrogate: Masculinity in A Perfect World

I've been wanting to tackle the subject of "masculinity" in film for quite some time now, but I hadn't quite known how best to do that. There's a certain buzzword, "toxic masculinity," that especially elicits a lot of strong feelings from a lot of different angles. While a post-#MeToo world has exposed some very disturbing truths about the way masculinity has historically performed, I'm not here to roast 50% of the world population. Actually, I really want to talk about a man's capacity for good. Ted Lasso (2020) There’s certainly a lot of discussion to be had for newer media celebrating men for possessing attributes not historically coded as "manly." But what's even more fascinating to me are the attempts to bridge the gap between traditional masculinity and new age expectations--to reframe an older vision of manhood within our modern context. Which brings me to Clint Eastwood’s 1993 film, A Perfect World. ...

The Other Woman: Empathy Isn't Easy

Anyone else remember that one time Padme wrecked Phoebe's marriage to Max Medina? Directed by Don Roos, The Other Woman first premiered in Toronto in 2009. At the time, the movie was sporting the title of the book from which it was adapted, Love, and Other Impossible Pursuits . But the film didn’t receive any kind of widespread theatrical release until 2011, when it also sported its new title. We can assume perhaps distributors were more eager to showcase the film after Portman’s Oscar win for Black Swan at the 2011 ceremony . I myself caught the film on Netflix circa 2017, a time I remember as being especially fruitful for discovering underseen and independently financed films on the service (back before most of Netflix's budget went instead to funding such homegrown masterworks as Extraction or Damsel ...). In the tentpole-driven film world that we were already seeing emerge in 2009, an underground Netflix following is typically the highest t...

REVIEW: Jungle Cruise

Disney has relied on branding for their box-office since Walt himself started using fairy-tales as a launching pad. Flash forward 80 years, and the branding wars have escalated not just within the Disney company, but the industry all around. Disney's Jungle Cruise walks the line between original and remix, and not just because it's adapted from a theme-park ride. This film, a pastiche of adventure flicks over the last 60 years, absorbs the best from its sources of inspiration but falls just short of congealing them into something truly groundbreaking. Tales a mythical tree of life have beckoned explorers since it bloomed into legend hundreds of years ago. This catches the interest of explorer Lily Houghton who makes it her mission to find the tree, first to distribute its gifts to the world and second to keep it from the hands of less benevolent seekers. Her success hinges on joining forces with the gruff Frank Wolff. He'll ferry Lily and her brother, McGregor, across th...

REVIEW: Wildwood

Travis Knight's Wildwood has already generated above-normal discourse about the merits and application of animation as an artform. "Don't you realize that animation isn't just for KIDS, by Jove!?" (Don't you realize ... lots of us have been saying that for a while now?) This connects to a much larger conversation about the stigma the artform has held, a conversation that has generally placed the onus on animation--and animators--to prove they can be as good as "real films" and "real filmmakers." Animation as a form will need sustained support--from more than just the crowd who waited until now to decide that animated movies could be "good, actually." But Wildwood itself offers other contributions that I imagine will carry the field much further. Oregonian preteen Prue McKeel ignores her parents' instruction to not take her brother, Mac, outside. When a flock of crows descend and carry her brother off into the w...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog