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DreamWorks Animation has put Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and the rest of its merchandise fodder on the back-burner for a moment to chase after the verdant fantasies of Studio Ghibli legend Hayao Miyazaki. Their adaptation of Peter Brown's 2016 novel The Wild Robot is a beautiful little union between the Hollywood mainstream and the wider animation scene beyond. It preserves DreamWorks's broad, direct appeals to sentimentality while weaving in a little more of the thematic maturity and subtlety you might see over at Ghibli or Ireland's Cartoon Saloon.
Rozzum Unit 7134 (Lupita Nyong'o) crash-lands on an uninhabited island, only to find herself at an existential loss when none of its critter population will accept her assistance. It's all she was built to do. But, after a terrible accident leaves runt Brightbill (Kit Connor) as the sole survivor of his goose family, Rozzum, or "Roz", starts to rewrite her programming in order to pursue the ultimate act of service - parenthood.
A story of a cross-species adoptive family is familiar territory for director Chris Sanders, behind Disney's Lilo & Stitch, as well as DreamWorks's How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. But he mastered the archetype right out of the gate, and has since maintained his ability to leave his audiences a blubbering mess. The Wild Robot is no different. He's found some capable partners in emotional crime here, not only in Kris Bowers's score, which always swells at the right moment, but in the way Nyong'o's voice work starts in the perky realm of Siri and Alexa, before melting into pure, human tenderness.
It's a packed voice cast, with contributions from Catherine O'Hara, Matt Berry, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Ving Rhames, and Mark Hamill. Particularly striking is Pedro Pascal's performance as fox Fink, a wily loner who sheds his predator instincts to become an uncle to the little gosling, allowing for an affecting mixture of the actor's natural mischief and cracked-voice vulnerability.
As Roz's body starts to crack and rust, acquiring a thin layer of moss, she starts to look suspiciously like the automaton in Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky. But it's a worthy tribute, equally concerned with the idea of harmony between the natural and the mechanical, and the selflessness and empathy it would take to, as Roz puts it, "become more than we're programmed to be". It's notable the film takes place in a future subtly but unmistakably ravaged by climate change.
The Wild Robot is also refreshingly honest and hilariously morbid when it comes to the cycles of life and death. "As a mother of seven," O'Hara's possum matriarch starts, at one point. An offscreen yelp forces her to pause and correct herself. "Six." Such dark humour is a rare sign of respect for its pint-sized audience, whose intelligence and curiosity have increasingly been undermined by major studios. And, while news that there's already a sequel in the works may make the entire exercise feel a little less radical, The Wild Robot proves Hollywood animation can still be more than it's programmed to be, too.
