Time: 102 Minutes
Age Rating: PG – Violence
Voice Cast:
Lupita Nyong’o as ROZZUM unit 7134 (“Roz”)
Pedro Pascal as Fink
Kit Connor as Brightbill
Catherine O’Hara as Pinktail
Bill Nighy as Longneck
Stephanie Hsu as Vontra
Mark Hamill as Thorn
Matt Berry as Paddler
Ving Rhames as Thunderbolt
Director: Chris Sanders

I had been hearing some buzz around The Wild Robot. I really didn’t know much about it going in, except that it was an animated movie with Lupita Nyong’o voicing the lead role. It was a lot better than I was expecting it to be.

The Wild Robot is simple, yet solid and effective; a funny, warm and heartfelt story about growing up, moving on, and finding your place in the world. It’s very easy to get emotionally invested in the story and the main three characters, which is helped by the chemistry they share. The first half of the movie is great and surprisingly patient, but was getting into some familiar beats in the second half. It also felt like it was rushing some aspects of the plot in certain places. With it being around 100 minutes long, I almost wished that it was a little longer so that we could’ve actually seen some of these plot and character developments on screen. It also has some stumbles towards the third act, it concludes with a sort of action climax which felt out of place from the rest of the movie, even if it generally worked fine enough.

The characters are great, helped by the fantastic voice work from Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal and Kit Connor as the leads, as well as the supporting cast in Matt Berry, Bill Nighy, Catherine O’Hara, Ving Rhames and Mark Hamill.

The direction from Chris Sanders is top notch; the animation is beautiful and stylised, I liked the forest setting and environment, and the character designs are great. It’s also accompanied by an amazing score from Kris Bowers.

The Wild Robot is funny, entertaining, beautifully animated, and emotionally poignant with fantastic voice performances. It seems that this is the last movie from DreamWorks to be made in-house, with that in mind, it’s a very good send off for them.