Like being hit repeatedly over the head with a giant, squishy hammer.
It is genuinely baffling when you come out of a movie like this, having read all of the reviews beforehand calling it one of the great animated movies of all time and this generations Bambi; and wondering to yourself if you'd even watched the same movie.
The animation was great, yes. Although for me personally, the animals became too overly personified and lost some of their charm once they started speaking. But there were some visually stunning scenes, particularly towards the end.
Where the movie was really let down for me was the script writing and the story, which felt clunky and often forced. The writer knew where he wanted to take us and what messages he wanted to convey and he was going to squish the characters and the ensuing narrative into whatever shape they needed to be in order to get there.
It felt overly feel good (all the animals are going to live together in harmony forever after, really? And what are the predators going to eat?), while also being occasionally injected with odd moments of brutality - like a possum mother's child being eaten - which were treated in a weirdly humorous and offhand manner that didn't fit with the film.
Maybe i was just feeling overly cynical while watching The Wild Robot, or I'm too accustomed to the subtlety of Ghibli movies that the various messages that were crammed into this film felt like being hit repeatedly over the head with a soft and squishy hammer.
The animation was great, yes. Although for me personally, the animals became too overly personified and lost some of their charm once they started speaking. But there were some visually stunning scenes, particularly towards the end.
Where the movie was really let down for me was the script writing and the story, which felt clunky and often forced. The writer knew where he wanted to take us and what messages he wanted to convey and he was going to squish the characters and the ensuing narrative into whatever shape they needed to be in order to get there.
It felt overly feel good (all the animals are going to live together in harmony forever after, really? And what are the predators going to eat?), while also being occasionally injected with odd moments of brutality - like a possum mother's child being eaten - which were treated in a weirdly humorous and offhand manner that didn't fit with the film.
Maybe i was just feeling overly cynical while watching The Wild Robot, or I'm too accustomed to the subtlety of Ghibli movies that the various messages that were crammed into this film felt like being hit repeatedly over the head with a soft and squishy hammer.
- jrgdavieswalter
- Oct 13, 2024