Animation feature film “The Wild Robot” may feel quite familiar in case of what it is about, but it will surprise you a lot for how it is about. Here is an animation film which is not just merely well-made and entertaining but actually quite thoughtful and poignant, and that is surely something we do not see at movie theater everyday.

The story premise of the film is deceptively simple and straightforward. A highly developed AI robot, ROZZUM unit 7134 (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), happens to be washed onto a remote forest island during the opening scene, and the first act of the story mainly revolves around how it gradually gets itself adapted to this new environment. Although it is quite clumsy at first as attempting to communicate with those various animals living in the island, the robot soon gets to learn how to communicate with them, so the animal characters in the film can talk while we stick closer to the robot’s viewpoint.

As looking for any assignment during its rather rocky first days, the robot, which is eventually called “Roz” in short, comes upon the little egg of Canada goose after it inadvertently causes the death of one female Canada goose and her other offsprings. Roz becomes more flabbergasted when a runt eventually comes out of the shell, and it reluctantly takes the role of mother for this little runt as advised by a red fox named Fink (Voiced by Pedro Pascal), who becomes the robot’s best friend despite their rather unpleasant first encounter.

What follows next is how Roz comes to reprogram itself bit by bit for its accidental motherhood. Along with Fox, it tries its best for raising up that little runt, and that prompts it to find some loopholes in its command system for staying longer with that little runt, who is later named Brightbill (voiced by Kit Connor). During next months, Brightbill comes to grow up and up under its constant care, and then there comes a point where he must join many other Canada geese in their upcoming migration before the arrival of winter.

As simply letting the story and characters roll from one point to another, the screenplay by director/writer/co-producer Chris Sanders, which is based on the children’s book of the same name by Peter Brown, steadily builds up its emotional narrative with surprisingly moving moments to remember. Yes, Roz surely comes to have and feel more emotions as trying to raise her adoptive son, and this character development is a lot more engaging than expected as the story effortlessly balances itself between humor and gravitas. While Roz’s frequently unflappable attitude is the main source of amusement throughout the story, we come to sense more of her emotional development as she devotes herself to another assignment for her adoptive son, and the movie also thoughtfully handles the serious sides of the story with lots of honesty and sensitivity. For example, when Roz must be very honest to her adoptive son about what happened to his biological family, this crucial moment is presented with enough emotional complexity, and that is certainly appreciated a lot by both young and adult audiences.

Furthermore, the film is a sheer visual pleasure to be cherished for its rich background and character details. While it often looks quite realistic as you can expect from its digital animation, it also feels breathtakingly gorgeous with a number of distinctively stylish touches to be admired, and I particularly enjoyed many of background details in the film which sometimes evoke that lovely cell animation style of Hayao Miyazaki’s animation films.

During the part where Roz and Fink must teach and train Brightbill a lot for the upcoming migration, the film surely serve us several exhilarating flying sequences. This is no surprise at all considering that Sanders was the co-director of animation film “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010), but the result is still superlative on the whole, and it is further energized by Kris Bowers’ terrific score, which deserves to be Oscar-nominated like John Powell’s great score for “How to Train Your Dragon”.

Although its last act feels a bit jarring as going for more dramatic intensity, the film remains anchored well by the excellent voice performance by Lupita Nyong’o, which is inarguably the heart and soul of the story. While sounding as robotic as required all the time, Nyong’o subtly infuses emotional nuances to her character without making any misstep, and we come to like her character as much as that endearing robot hero of great Pixar animation film “Wall-E” (2008) or that hulking but ultimately lovable robot character in criminally overlooked animation film “The Iron Giant” (1999).

Around Nyong’o, the film assembles a bunch of colorful voice performers including Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, and Catherine O’Hara, and they also have each own moment to shine as bringing extra personality to the story and characters. A friend of mine recently told me that he got really tired of watching talking animals in animation films, and I understand that to some degree, but I can willingly tell him that “The Wild Robot” is an exception mainly because its robot character’s ability to communicate with animals not only is crucial but also feels organic in the context of the story.

Overall, “The Wild Robot” is a considerable achievement in many aspects while also reminding us that this year has been a rather exceptional year for animation robot characters. After we got “Robot Dreams” (2023) early in this year, and there recently came an unexpectedly solid surprise via “Transformers One” (2024), and now we have “The Wild Robot”. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best animation films of this year, and I wholeheartedly urge you to check it out at movie theater as soon as possible.