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We saw this at the RMAF convention and are now playing it.
It looks a little bit like "The cast of Migration finds a robot" -- since some of the main characters (besides the robot) are ducks. The story is a takeoff on another Universal film, "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," with a bit of "Cast Away" thrown in and mixed with "The Iron Giant."
It's a very sweet movie, and has a lot of good laughs. In most kids movies, "death" is hardly mentioned -- or only happens to the villain in the end. In this movie, creatures are killed off routinely, just like in real life. The characters discuss death as if it's just a fact of life, which of course it is, but it's just something that's almost never broached in a movie like this. The animation is beautiful. The story is pretty compelling. It's nice to see a kids movie that isn't a sequel, a remake, or off-the-rails maniacal and doesn't assume kids (or adults) are stupid.
Following the laws of 2024 movies, the hero is a female, even though she (it?) is a robot. Not that all robots should be males, I guess. I suppose the most famous robot even back in my childhood was Rosie, from the Jetsons, but I digress.
This movie has the titular robot, named Roz, wind up on a tropical island like Wilson from "Cast Away," but unlike the famous volleyball, the robot is pretty self sufficient and is equipped with the very modern "A.I.," which allows it to analyze, download, and parse all the sounds made by the various animals on the island, and then be able to carry on conversations with them in English. (It's definitely a much more logical, if improbable, "method" for allowing animals to talk than the dumb solution coughed up in the Pixar movie "Up.")
Roz is also apparently equipped with some kind of never-draining battery. Maybe she's solar powered.
Roz also, unlike any robot in real life, does not require perfectly smooth surfaces to move around on, so she gets along just fine on a tropical island. Until she happens to accidentally kill a mama bird by falling on a nest with eggs. The only egg to survive hatches into a "runt" duck (a male, natch) and thus arrives the movie's main story: Since Roz is the first creature the newly hatched duck sees, she becomes his mom and she now must raise him before the inevitable signal gets sent for Roz to "return home," via a manufacturer-dispatched aircraft that will arrive to pick her up and return her for refurbishing.
As you can tell, as in most animated movies, you have to put most of what you know about physics, and life in general, to the side, because the story is impossible otherwise. But the movie is made with such heart and soul that you can overlook that. Lupita Nyong'o does a nice job as the voice of the robot, who starts off all Siri-like, but by the end seems to have developed some actual empathy for the creatures she's stuck with.
The real star of this movie is the animation and the artwork. As one review I read put it, there are many scenes in this movie that would be suitable for framing. My personal favorite is a sequence where Roz goes charging through piles of fallen colorful leaves, sending them flying in all directions. You just don't see that kind of effort put into animated movies these days, especially not from Universal's usual animation hands.
Bottom line, I would say this is the best animated movie of the year so far, and I'd say it's a safe bet to win the Oscar for best animated film, especially considering the upcoming competition. 3.5 out of 5 stars for me.
It looks a little bit like "The cast of Migration finds a robot" -- since some of the main characters (besides the robot) are ducks. The story is a takeoff on another Universal film, "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," with a bit of "Cast Away" thrown in and mixed with "The Iron Giant."
It's a very sweet movie, and has a lot of good laughs. In most kids movies, "death" is hardly mentioned -- or only happens to the villain in the end. In this movie, creatures are killed off routinely, just like in real life. The characters discuss death as if it's just a fact of life, which of course it is, but it's just something that's almost never broached in a movie like this. The animation is beautiful. The story is pretty compelling. It's nice to see a kids movie that isn't a sequel, a remake, or off-the-rails maniacal and doesn't assume kids (or adults) are stupid.
Following the laws of 2024 movies, the hero is a female, even though she (it?) is a robot. Not that all robots should be males, I guess. I suppose the most famous robot even back in my childhood was Rosie, from the Jetsons, but I digress.
This movie has the titular robot, named Roz, wind up on a tropical island like Wilson from "Cast Away," but unlike the famous volleyball, the robot is pretty self sufficient and is equipped with the very modern "A.I.," which allows it to analyze, download, and parse all the sounds made by the various animals on the island, and then be able to carry on conversations with them in English. (It's definitely a much more logical, if improbable, "method" for allowing animals to talk than the dumb solution coughed up in the Pixar movie "Up.")
Roz is also apparently equipped with some kind of never-draining battery. Maybe she's solar powered.
Roz also, unlike any robot in real life, does not require perfectly smooth surfaces to move around on, so she gets along just fine on a tropical island. Until she happens to accidentally kill a mama bird by falling on a nest with eggs. The only egg to survive hatches into a "runt" duck (a male, natch) and thus arrives the movie's main story: Since Roz is the first creature the newly hatched duck sees, she becomes his mom and she now must raise him before the inevitable signal gets sent for Roz to "return home," via a manufacturer-dispatched aircraft that will arrive to pick her up and return her for refurbishing.
As you can tell, as in most animated movies, you have to put most of what you know about physics, and life in general, to the side, because the story is impossible otherwise. But the movie is made with such heart and soul that you can overlook that. Lupita Nyong'o does a nice job as the voice of the robot, who starts off all Siri-like, but by the end seems to have developed some actual empathy for the creatures she's stuck with.
The real star of this movie is the animation and the artwork. As one review I read put it, there are many scenes in this movie that would be suitable for framing. My personal favorite is a sequence where Roz goes charging through piles of fallen colorful leaves, sending them flying in all directions. You just don't see that kind of effort put into animated movies these days, especially not from Universal's usual animation hands.
Bottom line, I would say this is the best animated movie of the year so far, and I'd say it's a safe bet to win the Oscar for best animated film, especially considering the upcoming competition. 3.5 out of 5 stars for me.
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