PREMISE
After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island’s animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.
THE GOOD STUFF
LUPITA – Back in the day when THE IRON GIANT came along, the consensus was that Vin Diesel, the title character’s voice, was perfectly cast because he does sound like the character looks. Throughout all the wonderful voice performances, there have been many different animated features from Dreamworks, Disney, and even Miyazaki films; so rare is it that the actor’s voice sounds like what the character looks like. Lupita Nyong’o’s voice is so pitch-perfect for the aesthetic of this character that I (a man with a humongous crush on Nyong’o) ceased envisioning her ethereal physical stature when hearing the voice.
This is about as pitch-perfect as voice performances can get.
PASCAL – By now, Pedro Pascal has been so aggressively ingrained into our collective psyche because of the phenomenal work that he consistently does that a common moviegoer may think that he has an instantaneously identifiable voice, but he doesn’t. “Who is this phenomenal actor playing the co-lead in this film?” I asked myself, only to be shocked that it was him… for about 5 seconds.
Pascal is an actor doing so much phenomenal work at once. He might be on the greatest run of any actor of the past 15 years. He’s just as excellent here as he has been in a plethora of other things.
VONTRA – The thing about a movie like this is that you know a villain will eventually pop up. Until the end of the second act, this is a coming-of-age story of our three main protagonists. The villain isn’t introduced until the third act, and I have to be honest, I expected the story to drop off from there because it would take quite the interesting villain to maintain the level of interest I was at at that point in the film. Then Vontra shows up and adds more to something that was already an excellent story.
I am hard-pressed to believe that Stephanie Hsu has previously played the video game PORTAL. Because the villain she’s playing in this film is essentially the villain from that video game (A villain often considered one of the most memorable and creative villains in video game history). Hsu embodies the soulless robots of the villain with pleasantries and humor, and as we all know by now – nice villains are creepy. Didn’t expect a creepy vibe to be the cherry on top of this excellent film, but it is what it is.
THE (kinda) BAD STUFF
Boy, did I have to dig pretty deep to find something bad about this film. But if I’m going to get ultra ultra picky here, I don’t appreciate movies that end the way this does. Thank goodness this movie is making money, and does merit a sequel based off if it’s weekend opening, otherwise this would be an infuriating ending to me. Perhaps just me and no one else.
THE UGLY STUFF
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There isn’t a single thing about this movie that isn’t done to the highest possible quality. It’s funny just as much as it is touching, the visuals are top-notch, and it’s the perfect movie to listen to in a Dolby sound theater. (That is if you’re going to an AMC theater to watch it) When I saw INSIDE OUT 2 earlier this year, I couldn’t help but think there wouldn’t be an animated movie that could touch the quality it had to bring until now. If asked to pick between the two, I would have to flip a coin.Â
This is possibly the best DreamWorks animated movie since Shrek 2 two decades ago.
THE WILD ROBOT is in theaters now
