Somewhere on a distant island, a verdant little slice of nature filled to the brim with all of North America’s greatest hits creatures (bears, raccoons, skunks, foxes, geese, all the recognizable stars), a snazzy robot has crash-landed. Her name is ROZZUM unit 7134, she’s winningly voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, and she’s a real striver. Like all ROZZUM units — imagine the love child of The Iron Giant and WALL-E — she’s built to serve, and will “always complete its task, just ask.
” Unfortunately, when a technological marvel like ROZZUM unit 7134 unexpectedly arrives on an uninhabited island, finding a human master to actually tell them her what to do is a hefty ask. Such is the starting point of Chris Sanders’ gorgeously rendered — both in style and tone — “The Wild Robot,” which the filmmaker himself adapted from Peter Brown’s bestselling novel of the same name (spoiler alert: the books are a trilogy, and here’s hoping we get more films to match them). Crafted in a painterly 2D style, the world of “ The Wild Robot ” is instantly immersive, even as it takes a while for the plucky Roz (as she will eventually come to be known) to settle in.
The animals are not exactly welcoming to Roz, early evidence of the film ‘s occasionally darker elements (this is, after all, an ostensibly kid-friendly feature that features an early and awesome joke about baby possum death). But Roz is nothing if she’s not patient — being not made of flesh and blood sur.