The Wild Robot

Release Date - October 18

Cert - U, Run-time - 1 hour 42 minutes

Director - Chris Sanders

After crashing onto an island a robot assistant (Lupita Nyong'o) explores and adapts to the landscape, tasked with raising a baby goose amongst the natural surroundings.

Rozzum 7134, or 'Roz', (Lupita Nyong'o) is a robot led by a need to assist. Having crashed onto an island uninhabited by humans she awakes to stagger around the landscape to fulfill her programmed feelings of "crushing obligation". Visually the landscape is fantastic, Dreamworks continue their trend of being inspired by anime and the works of Hayao Miyazaki with stunning animation and scenery as Roz terrifies the animals living on the island - similar to Stitch in writer-director Chris Sanders' Lilo And Stitch.

Looking for someone to assist, no creature is interested. That is until she comes to protect a lone surviving egg from which hatches a gosling (Boone Storm). It's clear that Roz's aim is to help the baby goose, named Brightbill to survive, and prepare him for his migratory flight in the Autumn. That is if Roz's understanding of the world doesn't get in the way, or her programmers come to get her.

The run-time breezes by, and avoids feeling episodic as it so easily could, as relationships build and Sanders works in his deeper thematic elements. It seems he's always taken a shine to the outsiders exploring a new world, trying to be welcomed into it. This is exactly the case for Roz and Brightbill, alongside cynical fox Fink (Pedro Pascal), who quickly assemble a small, dysfunctional family unit as the goose grows up.

There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments to be found throughout, cleverly playing into the world and the different animals which crop up - a group of baby possums, led by their mother voiced by Catherine O'Hara, bicker about what they died of when playing dead - this may be one of the most frequently funny films of the year. Helping to connect us with the brightly-coloured world and characters as they try to understand and make their way through it. Making way for the emotional beats which crop up in the latter stages with good effect in multiple moments, and help from the starry ensemble voice cast which also includes Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Stephanie Hsu, Bill Nighy and Matt Berry - who delivers stunning wordplay which makes for perhaps the best line of the year in the third act.

The Wild Robot is a film that has a heart. One that is on full, proud display from start to finish. Wasting no time or frames that heart grows alongside that of the main character, wonderfully voiced by Nyong'o, growing feelings, a sense of self and belonging. All hand-in-hand; never separately. 

It all makes for a wonderful animated film with a strong visual style, the kind we're beginning to thankfully see more of post-Spider-Verse, with plenty of laughs and heart building towards the successful emotional peaks within the clear and stripped-back thematic elements. This feels destined to rightfully become a fondly-remembered classic.

Four stars