Review of “The Wild Robot”: A triumph full of soulful narrative and breathtaking animation

In the opening scenes of “The Wild Robot,” a sprightly metal android with a state-of-the-art processing unit wanders through a forest, asking confused animals if he can help them and offering discount codes and stickers for future customers. “Did someone order me to do something?” it asks.

We did, as it turns out. This adaptation of Peter Brown’s award-winning middle grade novel is an absolute cinematic triumph, a soulful, sweetly sad animated journey that might make your kids wonder why you’re so teary-eyed. It is intended to be ordered and reordered.

Chris Sanders, the writer and director of How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods and Lilo & Stitch, is the writer and director here. The task is daunting: transform a popular book with a few illustrations into a full-length film without losing its lively core. Sanders didn’t just do it; he lasered it.

“The Wild Robot” is the fish-out-of-water story of a futuristic helper robot who is stranded on an island when a storm sinks his container ship. It learns to adapt and interact with creatures it isn’t programmed to handle, and even adopts the cutest gosling you’ll ever see (sorry, Ryan).

The robot – ROZZUM Unit 7134, or “Roz” for short – is voiced by Lupita Nyong’o in a spectacularly nuanced performance, at first vividly robotic and ultimately natural and ironic. The other voice actors – Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Kit Connor, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Ving Rhames – are not like the mercenaries that other animated films use to attract audiences. Each is beautifully calibrated.

The film maintains the basic structure of the book, but highlights some characters – such as highlighting the importance of Pascal’s red fox – and has a tendency to have a bit of Hollywood, such as sending a robot army after Roz and setting everything on fire. But there are no lags, the visual effects are amazing and its soul is intact.

“The Wild Robot” is often a story about programming – natural and artificial – and how it can help and hinder. “I don’t have the programming to be a mother,” Roz tells a possum mother (a great O’Hara). She replies, “None of us do.”

Roz has landed on an island where survival of the fittest and instinct are the rule, where animals don’t sing and dance but fight and hunt each other. “Kindness is not a survival skill,” the fox tells our robot.

“The Wild Robot” is also a celebration of adoption and found families. The push and pull of parenthood is there, as is the celebration of friendship. And there is death, an honest reminder of the struggle for survival.

Visually it is breathtaking, a structured world that seems almost picturesque. You can see snowflakes settling on speckled fur, moss on rocks, individual leaves in a cave. The image of a tree covered in butterflies is so spectacular that it should be a poster we can all frame. No offense to Roz, but regular computer-generated works – Transformers One, we’re looking at you – look lackluster in comparison.

Roz accidentally causes the death of a family of geese, except for one unharmed egg. This orphan is now Roz’s obligation – she must teach him to eat, swim and fly, culminating in the winter migration. And she has to face difficult questions – like how a robot came to raise a little goose. “He found where he belonged,” Roz says with happy sadness as her gosling swims towards a group of geese.

What home is is a different issue: Roz feels the urge to return to her factory, but only out of obligation. Her heart lies with this island and the friends she has made, especially after creating a safe place for all living things during a freezing winter. Their kindness changes the way the animals see each other, even if it can’t change their appetites.

Motherhood also changes Roz, freeing her from her ones and zeros, making her improvise and even willing to break some rules, like learning to lie to come up with a creative bedtime story. A broken robot from the shipwreck is stunned at what has become of Roz when she comes by for advice: “You shouldn’t feel anything.”

And you? You will have all the feelings. Give up. Is this the best animated film of the year? Completely so far. It might even be the best film of the year. See you at the Oscars, Roz.