DreamWorks Animation | the m0vie blog

396. The Wild Robot (#154)

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney, this week with special guest Deirdre Molumby, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This week, Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot.

On a remote island, a freak storm brings a surprise visitor: a top of the line service robot. Without any humans around to give her a task, the robot searches for purpose among the island’s animal inhabitants. She stumbles across a young gosling, taking on the task of raising the small bird. Although parenting is not part of her programming, this wild robot discovers that love is a powerful force.

At time of recording, it was ranked 154th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: animation, anthropomorphic animals, chris sanders, deirdre molumby, dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation, environmentalism, family films, imdb, lupita nyong'o, motherhood, pedro pascal, podcast, survival, The 250, the wild robot, This Just In | Leave a comment »

Reckless Guardians: The Rise and Fall of Cinematic Responsibility…

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Darren

I actually quite enjoyed The Rise of the Guardians. It is probably the most visually assured animation from Dreamworks to date, the cast are all having a great time and the plot is simple but effective. However, I just didn’t wind up feeling an emotional connection to the central character, Jack Frost. Jack is an embodiment of an abstract concept – a “guardian” appointed by “the Man in the Moon” (or “Manny” to his friends). The bulk of Rise of the Guardians is about Jack learning to embrace his new position and everything that comes with it – to swallow his insecurity and to accept that he has been chosen to do a kick-ass job.

Still, it remains quite difficult to connect with Jack Frost, and I wonder if it’s the same problem that made Pixar’s much-maligned Cars 2 so difficult to swallow. Rather than learning to temper his unreliable inconsistency, the movie asks an irresponsible character to effectively embrace the flaw completely.