This award-winning DreamWorks adaptation of the book by Peter Brown is beautifully animated. The usual style of CGI films gives me a headache, but this one is reminiscent of classic animation. I enjoyed the book and I think the film, directed by Chris Sanders, effectively encapsulates the concepts of the book. The voice actors are very good and much care has been taken to keep the film suitable for children while having an emotional appeal to adults.

The story is that a robot, Roz, is washed up on an island. The animals are scared of her, but she uses their tactics to survive. When she adopts an orphaned gosling, she learns about being a mother and begins to fit in with the animal community.

The nature of Roz is a little different to the book, where she becomes curious about her origins but does not think she belongs elsewhere. In the film, the upbringing of the gosling Brightbill is a task she must complete, after which she activates a signal so that she will be collected. This emphasises her ability to override her programming, as she decides to stop the signal, although it’s too late by then. She is, to use her own word, more ‘robot-y’ in the film, even printing out photo-stickers of the customers (animals) and asking them to rate her performance. It’s made clear that her purpose is to serve humans. In the book, humans barely get a mention and they are a threat, but the film has no strong messages about this. I wasn’t too keen on the ending, which seemed overly sentimental and formulaic, but I suppose it’s what I should expect in a film for a young audience.

There are some other changes, particularly about the other animal characters, but generally this adaptation is similar to the book. The illustrations in the book are quite simple, so it’s nice to see these fully realised.

Image: http://www.impawards.com/2024/wild_robot_ver5.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76268205