Film Review Double Feature: "The Wild Robot" and "Carry-On"
These two new films demonstrate the subtle but extraordinary power of simple stories told well and with feeling.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the films follow.
For this week’s movie double feature–which I quite enjoy doing–I’m talking about two films that are almost complete opposites but which share the common feature of being simple stories told well. I’m speaking, of course, of The Wild Robot and Carry-On. These two wildly different films don’t try to reinvent the wheel, but they do manage to entertain and, more importantly, they are also in their own ways slyly politically subversive.
When The Wild Robot begins ROZZUM Unit 7134–shortened to Roz and voiced by a pitch-perfect Lupita Nyong'o–ends up abandoned on a distant island populated only by animals, most of whom view the robot with fear, even after she learns the power of speech. After being chased by a bear, Roz accidentally kills a mother goose and crushes most of her eggs, after which she adopts the remaining hatchling, which she names Brightbill (voiced as a teen by Kit Connor). Aided by a smartass fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal) and a mother opossum, Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), Roz learns how to be a mother, but things get complicated in ways both large and small, as Brightbill chafes at his liminal status and more sinister forces want to reclaim Roz for their own.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the kind of film that wears its heart on its sleeve. Though I must admit that I’m a bit ambivalent about DreamWorks–I love the studio’s early works like The Prince of Egypt but am more lukewarm on Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon–this one had me from the jump. There’s an infectious charm to the voice acting, with each actor fitting seamlessly into their role, and I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for a story about a robot that learns how to overcome the programming. I’m even more of a sucker for a story about orphan animals. So, needless to say, The Wild Robot was ticking a lot of boxes for me.
It certainly helps that the film is breathtakingly beautiful to look at, with a rich texture and color palette that at times is almost painterly in its attention to detail. As other reviewers have noted, this is nothing short of a revelation in this moment of animation, when studios like Disney–once the leader in this regard–have largely abandoned anything remotely resembling art in favor of pumping out as much IP slop as quickly as they can. You can tell just by looking at The Wild Robot that this was a labor of love, with a meticulous attention to detail that immerses you in this world in all of its beauty and its terror (and it makes no bones about the fact that the wild is a dangerous place to be, with the opossum family often providing some delightful gallows humor).
Narratively, the film draws its power from both the fraught relationship between Brighbill and Roz. For much of the film Roz raises the gosling–who is smaller and more fragile than his compatriots–because it’s what her programming tells her to do, while he has a crisis of identity, made worse by the taunting and rejection of his fellow geese. It’s a story that has all the trappings of a beautiful, poignant, and heartbreaking maternal melodrama, and the film handles it with deftness.
The Wild Robot is one of those films that excels on two different, but complementary levels. On the one hand there’s the genuinely heartwarming story about found family, about overcoming one’s programming and fate to forge something new and extraordinary. I’ll admit that I found the whole “mama drama” storyline to be particularly impactful, but that’s exactly what you’d expect from a gay boy with a complicated relationship with his own mother. The moment when Brightbill finally calls Roz mom is one that hit me square in the feels, and it’ll be no surprise to anyone who reads this newsletter with any regularity that it made me weep. That, to me, is the mark of a truly great animated film.
On a deeper level, there’s also a powerful message here about privileging the commons over the individual, of forging bonds that can save a community during a time of crisis. There’s a particularly poignant moment later in the film when, faced with a deadly winter, Roz sets out to bring the various residents of the island together to live in her little hut, at great cost to herself. All hell breaks loose, of course, but somehow the predators and the prey learn to live together for the winter so that they can all survive. Maybe it’s just me grappling with the ugliness and fractiousness that seems to have taken over our entire society and culture, but I found this remarkably moving. It also finds its echo later in the film, when the animals have to band together to save Roz from her human makers, who dispatch another fleet of terrible robots to bring her back. It turns out, though, that nature can’t be beaten and that they’ll fight like hell to protect one of their own.
The Wild Robot is another timely reminder that there’s still a lot of magic left in animated films. Along with Lost, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, this is one of those films which grapples with the reality of climate change in a way that is subtle yet effective. In addition to showing a Golden Gate Bridge submerged in water, the film also shows the extent to which these future humans are determined to bend the natural world to their whims, no matter the cost. In a world in which many studios are unwilling to touch the issue of climate change–ahem, Twisters, ahem–this film is nothing short of a miracle.
And, while The Wild Robot tells a self-contained story that works all on its own, it also leaves room for a sequel. If we're lucky enough to get one I know that I, for one, will be right there on opening night.
Carry-On has been on my to-watch list for a while now. I’m a huge fan of Taron Egerton, who remains a remarkably versatile actor. It seems like you can put him in almost anything and he’ll shine, which he most certainly does as Ethan Kopek, a TSA agent whose life is turned upside down once he becomes an unwilling accomplice in a looming terror attack. Egerton slides easily into the body and mindset of a young man in his 30s who hasn’t yet figured out just what he wants to do with his life, even though he has a beautiful, pregnant girlfriend, Nora (Sofia Carson), who encourages him to apply to the police academy again.
Ethan’s life is turned upside down when, having taken his buddy’s place in the TSA line–in an attempt to prove himself to his boss and hopefully get a promotion–he becomes a tool in a ruthless mercenary’s attempt to smuggle a carry-on with a deadly nerve agent onto a plane. As the plot unwinds it becomes clear that they are both part of a much larger game, and that a group of defense contractors have decided to kill everyone on the plane, including one of their own, a congresswoman who hopes to pass a bill that would give them more money. It’s one of those plots that feels more than a little contrived, but Carry-On is just so confident in its own bravura that you find yourself going along for the ride.
It certainly helps that it has a compelling villain in the person of Jason Bateman, who plays the Traveler with such a sort of blunt charm that you find him both terrifying and irresistible. I’ve always thought there was a bit of a sly edge to Bateman’s on-screen persona, one that’s evident in both his comedy and, even more notably, in his dramatic turns (see also: Ozark). He brings all of that to bear in this role, and from the moment that he calls Ethan and begins bending him to his will, you realize that this is a very dangerous man indeed, someone more than willing to order the murders of anyone who stand in his way and is also quite capable of doing the deed himself when the need arises.
The first two thirds of the film are pure thriller melodrama (complimentary), with a deliberate pacing that heightens the tension with every moment. From the moment that Ethan puts in the earbud that the Traveler has planted and becomes part of his scheme, the tension builds. It’s a perfectly-executed cat-and-mouse game, as we cheer for Ethan’s, mostly failed attempts, to outwit his attacker. At the same time, we also follow Danielle Deadwyler’s Elena Cole, a member of the LAPD, as she races to LAX to try to keep the Traveler from implementing his plan. It’s a rather thankless role for Deadwyler, but she still gives it her all.
Now, it has to be said that the film, as with most thrillers of this type, really does go off the rails a bit in the third act. People manage to survive dreadful car accidents and getting shot and all the rest, but that’s kind of what you sign up for when you go into a film like this one. Much as I enjoy the thriller genre, it’s not really known for its narrative coherence. I’m here for the spectacle and the adrenaline, and Carry-On more than delivers on both counts.
Moreover, there’s also something surprisingly progressive about this film’s central conceit: that a group of weapons contractors are willing to sacrifice one of their own in order to make sure they get more money and more I think it’s safe to say that the thriller is, as a rule, a rather conservative genre, focused as it so often is on the White male savior and his efforts to keep his loved ones safe. To some extent, Carry-On is very much in this tradition, as Ethan repeatedly tries to save Nora from the Traveler and his accomplices, who make no secret of the fact that they will kill her at the first sight of his resistance. However, the film also posits that there are sinister and wealthy power-brokers for whom the lives of the little people are completely expendable. Perhaps it’s just that I’m writing this review in February 2025, when it’s very clear that we’re now living in an oligarchy, but I found Ethan’s success–despite all of the odds against him and despite the fact that he’s just a regular guy–a bit inspiring.
For this reason, it’s all the more satisfying to see the Traveler ultimately killed by the nerve gas that he was so flippantly going to use against a plane of innocent people. For all of this arrogance and his supposed omnipotence, for all that he claims that his job is to keep loss of life to a minimum, he’s ultimately brought down by both his own hubris and by an Everyman hero for whom doing the right thing isn’t just a ruthless calculation.
If only real life were so neat. Carry-On is a timely reminder that simple stories told well are not only a joy to watch. They can also inspire us, as strange as that may seem.