(Editor’s Note: Today’s column reveals important plot developments in the movie.)
Hands-down the best movie of the year, Dreamworks’ animated “Wild Robot” (based on Peter Brown’s bestselling books) begins with a storm that strands Rozzum 7143 (Lupita Nyong’o) on an island inhabited by (happily) just animals.
Inquisitive otters accidentally switch Roz on, whereupon she (I cannot bring myself to call her “it”) strives to fulfill her programming, which is to follow directives. As she towers over and chases the animals, demanding to be given orders, they flee in horror from “the monster.”
Roz accidentally falls on a nest of geese, crushing everyone except the smallest egg, which hatches into the runt of the flock, Brightbill (Kit Connor).
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Even if we can guess what happens next, the movie is so sincere that nothing seems forced, a relief from the at times heavy-handed handling of emotions in “Inside Out 2” or the often wearisome injections of wisecracks in superhero films.
Roz logically states that she does not possess the programming to be a mother, but Pinktail the opossum (Catherine O’Hara), literally carrying on her back a brood of seven, tells Roz that no one is ever prepared for parenthood.
“Just like an opossum playing dead [which results in laugh-out-loud moments in the film], parenting is often a practiced performance necessary for survival,” says critic Sara Hunter Simanson in Huffpost. “Any parent who has risen in the middle of a sleep cycle to feed or change a crying baby, held back the hair of a vomiting child while wanting to gag themselves, or stepped away to take a deep breath instead of yelling while a kid is throwing a massive tantrum, knows that advice is true. Parenting is often an overriding or repression of our base impulses—of our selfish desires to sleep, leave or scream.”
Roz does not leave or scream, and instead enlists the help of the wily fox Fink (Pedro Pascal, whose low-key yet splendid performance hits home, paralleling his role as the surrogate father of Baby Yoda, in the Star Wars’ TV series “The Mandalorian”).
Fink overrides his survival instincts (as a self-styled gosling expert, his resume consists of dining on them) and, in due course, through the patient example of Roz, he learns to not only care for Brightbill, but also to overcome a miserable childhood to genuinely help others in need.
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For anyone who blames lousy parents or school bullies for their emotional ill health today—watch this movie.
As I watch Roz teach Brightbill what to eat, I flash back to weaning, when my son, born premature, took his first bite of pureed foods at a year old.
As Roz instructs her son how to swim, I remember paddling beside mine, then five years old, as he finally succeeded in propelling himself in the water.
As Roz clings to a tree, craning her neck as her son migrates south with a gaggle of geese before the winter, I relive the worry when I bade farewell to my son, barely 17, as he went off to college in another land, counting the days when we would see each other again (the pandemic meant that we could not meet face-to-face for two years).
“Wild Robot” is also a hit with kids. The plot propels swiftly; minor characters are adorable but not cloying.
Reputedly the best animation Dreamworks has done (a surefire winner come awards season), the softly-painted rather than photorealistic take gives rise to an organic look that ups the emotional resonance.
In the climactic battle scene (where violence is never gratuitous), my son, now in his 20s, sat up and cheered as Roz seamlessly morphs into the various stances of her animal friends.
Lessons are many, foremost among them acceptance and cooperation as essential in the world.
“While the ending is positive, it’s not neatly resolved in a definitive happily ever after,” says Hannah Mansur in the parenting site MamaMia, “and that’s a good thing for our children to see. Being comfortable with ambiguity is a skill I want my kids to have, because as long as you have a strong support network around you—you can get through anything.”
Queena N. Lee-Chua is with the board of directors of Ateneo’s Family Business Center. Get her book “All in the Family Business” at Lazada or Shopee, or the ebook at Amazon, Google Play and Apple iBooks. Contact the author at blessbook.chua@gmail.com.