It’s safe to say that in 2024, my faith in the movie industry is at an all-time low. If filmmakers are not injecting their films with agenda-driven messages and casting, they’re churning out endless reboots of movies from a time when originality still characterized the industry. Or, when they do put out original films, they’re hopelessly dark and grim or chock full of vulgarity and salacious scenes. Which is why I was thrilled and utterly flabbergasted to discover a movie like The Wild Robot. This film shows that when you put story first, amazing and wonderful things can still find their way to the big screen. And The Wild Robot is one of the best I’ve ever seen, not just in 2024, but all-time.
Roz meet forest, forest meet Roz
The movie begins innocuously enough, with a walking, talking, thinking robot, a ROZZUM unit 7134, or “Roz” for short, crash landing on a remote wooded island. She immediately sets out to do what she was designed to do, complete tasks for her owners. The problem is, she can’t find any owners. And the forest animals she meets, don’t seem to have any tasks for her either.
After several failed attempts to perform her duties, Roz goes into “learning mode.” She spends a season apparently inactive, yet all the while she is learning the ways of the forest creatures to the point that she actually discovers how to speak their language. The rest of the film depicts her adventures among the forest animals, attempting to find a task that she can finally complete.
Her newfound ability to communicate does little at first to endear her to her woodland neighbors, however. She’s still freakishly strange to them, a dangerous “monster” that most of them avoid. Yet her earnest desire to serve and help those around her eventually wins her a single friend in the form of the disreputable fox, Fink. At first, Fink—who is rather friendless himself—only has his own interests in mind. But his crusty exterior slowly melts away as the film goes on and he discovers that the task Roz has set out for her actually becomes his task as well.
Mission improbable
And just what is the task Roz finally sets her sights upon? Mild spoilers for the rest of this paragraph, but the task she discovers is raising a young goose named Bright Bill. He’s an orphan who has decided that Roz is his mother and comically imitates her “beep-bop-boop” sounds to the other forest animals. Unfortunately, Bright Bill’s odd behavior makes him just as much an outsider to the forest denizens as his mother. But Roz, Fink, and Bright Bill persevere and, as Roz gives of herself time and time again to serve and protect those who can offer her nothing in return, even the most skittish, flighty, and boisterous of the other animals eventually come around. And Roz goes from being not just a mother to Bright Bill, but the hero, defender, and leader they never knew they needed.
This is a gorgeous film, both from a visual and an emotional perspective. I cried—easily and without shame—many times during the runtime of this film. True confession, I’m crying right now as I write this review. The film is that unspeakably beautiful. The relationship between Roz and Bright Bill—a robot and a gosling for crying out loud!—is one of the most tender and human I have ever seen. I know this movie was based on a book series, but I have to wonder if even the books could have crafted a connection so deep and profoundly moving.
A new hope
As I said in my opening gambit, this film shocked me by how good it was. I did not think modern cinema still had something like this in it. This movie is story at its finest. An ordinary character is thrust out of her world, forced to make sense of the strange turn of events, makes her defining decision to embrace a new destiny, and then sacrifices everything she has to achieve the final victory in a glorious climax that fittingly ties together all the threads and character arcs woven throughout the story. And the final scene, the denouement or epilogue, if you will, was my favorite of all. I left with a warm glow in my heart, knowing that I had made several new fictional friends whose story I would carry with me for the rest of my life.
And that’s what movies, when done well, do best. They tell a story that enriches and adds to our life. Like fantasy literature, they don’t help us escape from reality, but into it.
And all this with zero profanity and zero racy voyeurism. There is a bit of animal blood and death, but it’s quite sudden and brief. Other than that, even younger kids will find nothing to lead them astray in this marvelous and wholesome tale.
Go see it. Take your kids. And your parents. And your grandparents. And your neighbors. This is one for the ages.
