The Wild Robot: An animated treasure

The Wild Robot (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for action, peril and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.29.24

This is most sumptuously gorgeous animated film I’ve seen in years.

 

That’s surprising, given that it comes from the American Dreamworks Animation team; the verdant, sparkling look is much more typical of Tokyo’s Studio Ghibli. Indeed, in the production notes, director Chris Sanders described his film’s visual style as “a Monet painting in a Miyazaki forest.”

 

ROZZUM Unit 7134, renamed Roz (left), and Fink (right) contemplate the helpless
little gosling that has imprinted itself upon the large robot.

Image isn’t everything, of course, but recalling that Sanders co-directed and co-wrote Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon — both of which earned well-deserved Oscar nominations, for stories concerning species alien to each other, who learn to come together for the greater good — I had no doubt that he was just the right person to adapt Peter Brown’s popular 2016 middle-grade book.

Sanders solos this time, as both director and scripter; purists will recognize that he has, um. “massaged” Brown’s story a bit. Even so, the book’s tone and spirit have been translated faithfully, along with the essential moral that has become even more relevant today: “Kindness is a survival skill.”

 

The setting is our Earth, somewhen in the distant future. A savage storm prompts some sort of crash, which catapults a large crate onto a distant island bereft of human activity. Curious otters, poking inside the partially shattered crate, accidentally activate its inhabitant: a large, flexible robot dubbed ROZZUM Unit 7134.

 

It’s a companion robot, designed to fulfill “any and all tasks” requested by human owners. Upon activation, it requires a task ... but nobody can assign one.

 

The robot is voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, whose sensitive performance here reminds anew that we’ve long needed an Oscar category for such work. Her clipped, metallic, somewhat childlike cadence is note-perfect, as the robot attempts to make sense of these unexpected surroundings.

 

Small animals flee from her; large animals attack her. One encounter proves catastrophic, when she’s knocked over a cliff and lands hard on a goose nest. The mother is killed, the nest destroyed ... except for one egg. When a close scan reveals life inside, the robot decides to protect it.

 

That initially proves difficult, thanks to a predatory red fox that wishes the egg for breakfast. When it unexpectedly hatches, the fox is equally content to swallow the gosling; the robot somehow senses that this would be ... well ... inappropriate.

The Fall Guy: Rip-snortin' mayhem

The Fall Guy (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence, drug content and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.17.24

This is way too much fun.

 

Director David Leitch and scripter Drew Pearce dumped their stars into a frothy, tongue-in-cheek action epic that never takes itself seriously ... while simultaneously delivering a heartfelt indictment of Hollywood’s shameful refusal to properly acknowledge the brave, hard-working stuntmen and women — and their support teams — who’ve operated in the shadows since the dawn of cinema.

 

With everything to lose, Cole (Ryan Gosling) makes a last-ditch effort to solve the weird
mystery that plagues his ex's film shoot.

A few have been appropriately recognized, over time: the utterly amazing Yakima Canutt, gender-breaking pioneers Helen Gibson and Evelyn Finley, stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, and acrobatic stars such as Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan.

Most, though, remain anonymous ... thanks in great part to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ ongoing refusal to honor them with an Oscar category.

 

(They’re about to add one for casting directors ... but still not for stunt workers? Shameful.)

 

But I digress.

 

Pearce’s balls-to-the-wall plot, very loosely based on the 1981-86 Lee Majors TV series of the same name, opens as well-respected stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) successfully completes a drop-shot as a stand-in for insufferably self-centered movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The latter, egged on by producer/manager Gail Meyer (the hilariously overblown Hannah Waddingham, late of TV’s Ted Lasso), demands a retake; too much of Colt’s face is visible in the shot, spoiling the illusion that Ryder does his own stunts.

 

(This arrogant PR nonsense, notorious among far too many of Hollywood’s insecure “action heroes,” is woefully tolerated even to this day.)

 

The retake ... goes badly.

 

In a sickening sequence that draws horrified gasps even though Leitch keeps it off-camera — and is a disturbing echo of the real-world accident that crippled Daniel Radcliffe’s longtime stunt double, Davis Holmes (sensitively addressed in a poignant 2023 documentary — Colt breaks his back.

 

Flash-forward a year and change. Colt has withdrawn from life and the career he loved so much ... and from the woman, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), who also meant so much to him. He now works a dead-end job as a parking attendant; she has parlayed her behind-the-scenes film set responsibilities into a first-time directing assignment on an overblown sci-fi epic dubbed “Metalstorm.” It stars Ryder, of course, with Gail as executive producer.

 

But there’s trouble on the set. Unknown to Jody, Ryder has mysteriously vanished; worse yet, so has his stunt double, Kevin (Ben Gerrard). Gail, knowing that she can stall for a few days by suggesting that Jody focus on second-unit action scenes, reaches out and begs Cole to step in.

 

“Jody wants you,” Gail insists. “She needs you.”

 

Although plagued by doubt and guilt over how he abandoned Jody, Colt cannot resist this plea; could it mean that she has forgiven him?