Month: November 2024

Timestalker (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Girl meets boy, girl gets decapitated, girl meets boy again in a future life. Repeat.

I’m a massive fan of Alice Lowe, from her television work in Darkplace or Horrible Histories, to her forays into films. She’s weird. I mean that in a good way. She’s one of those actors who could turn up in almost any comedy or horror and it would make sense, how she didn’t make an appearance in Paddington or Wonka is astounding to me. It’s not just a performer, she’s gained a reputation as a pretty darn good writer/director too; giving the world Sightseers and Prevenge. The latter, she made whilst pregnant, and is highly recommended. My plan for this review as to gush over how much I adore her and everything she does, this is the first film of hers I’ve reviewed on this site, and it’s about damn time(stalker) I showed her the love she deserved.

With that in mind, it’s a shame that Timestalker isn’t quite as good as you feel it could be. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m not even saying it’s not good, but it’s not brilliant. It doesn’t feel as essential as some of her other work. It’s got a really unique premise, and some great visual styles, but there are times when it feels like that’s all it has. Timestalker does have the bad fortune to be released in 2024. It would be impossible to compare this to anything else any other year. You could legitimately say you’ve never seen anything like this. In 2024? It brings to mind Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (as reviewed here). They take different approaches to it though, whereas The Beast gives you existential dread and nihilistic thoughts, Timestalker gives you laughs and playfulness. It’s certainly more consistent than The Beast, better than the worst parts, but nowhere near as good as the best parts.

My biggest gripe is that Timestalker is that it feels like it is not making the most of the premise. It needs more links between the times, with repeated themes and visuals in different contexts. There are some visuals that keep cropping up (the pink heart for one) but they feel too forced and instead of suggesting a connected universe, this makes it feel more like that object has magical powers. The music, especially, is a component that definitely could have had a lot more fun with connective moments.

This is very negative I know. In truth, I did like Timestalker. It’s darkly funny with many moments where you catch yourself laughing at things you know you really shouldn’t. There are some terrific colours throughout, so it’s never an ugly watch. Aneurin Barnard is a revelation (which I realise now is a borderline offensive thing to say considering how many things he’s been in), he has innate star power, which helps you buy into the idea that she would fall in obsession with him. You see him on screen and you just know “That’s a star”. He backs this up with a good performance too, his performance in the 80’s timeline is a particular delight. The 80’s section was probably my favourite part, and not just because Lowe fits that decade visually. It’s also the part with the best story development, characterisation, and music. Her unspoken romance with Meg is also incredibly sweet.

In summary, it’s weird and wonderful, but not quite great. Alice Lowe is still one of the most unique creators around, and it will take something truly terrible for her to lose stock.

Woman Of The Hour (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: It’s 1970 and Sheryl Bradshaw is so desperate for TV time that her agent books her on The Dating Game, unaware that one of the male contestants is harbouring a dark and disturbing secret: he’s from Texas. Oh, and he kills people. That’s bad too.

Woman Of The Hour (or WOTH, pronounced to rhyme with cough) is like a six-dicked Calydonian boar, a strange beast you can’t turn away from. It’s helped by a truly fascinating story. This actually happened. In 1978, serial killer Rodney Alcala made an appearance on The Dating Game, and he did win, which has to be a real kick in the teeth of the guys who were rejected. Everything else about the story is fiction. The entire story of the woman who went out with him? Fake. The woman in the audience who reports the killer and is ignored? Fake. The host of the show is a complete dick? Fake (for this one specific person). A producer making creepy comments about Anna Kendrick whilst pointing at her breasts? Fa-oh wait, that’s real, happened to her when she was 19, which sadly meant she was too young to drink, so she couldn’t go to a bar, buy a bottle of drink then use the bottle to slit the throat of that producer.

I’m okay with that kind of approach to historical accuracy. This is mainly because it never pretends to be anything other than what it is; it is a fictional narrative that occurs during a real historical story. If it was presented with a subtitle like “The true story” then I’d object. The reality isn’t important, the story and the setting is. The setting is significant. This was a time when, according to the letter of the law, women were mostly equals (sometimes), but the reality was very different. Men still felt comfortable being sexually aggressive with female strangers, who would then be told to “take it as a compliment” or “stop complaining” when they mentioned it. It’s very different from now, I’ve spoken to many men on the subject and they all agree women are treated equally now. The time is just as much a character as the serial killer (now there’s a sentence I’ve never said before).

The other essential half of the jigsaw of WOTH is Anna Kendrick. This is her directorial debut and it’s pretty damn impressive. She does have a tendency towards being overly arty and “oooo look at this” as opposed to using the camera to tell a story. There are no moments which are “bad”, nothing which makes you think “Ooof, I wouldn’t have done that”, and more experienced directors have done that (A Quiet Place: Day One, for example, featured one of my least favourite shots of the year from a coherence standpoint, and that was from a guy with experience). I hope Kendrick continues to direct, and I’m curious as to what her next move would be. I’m hoping she continues to do stories she has a passion and personal interest in (she donated her fee from this movie to charity, because she’s lovely and a badass). She’s about 2 movies away from making an INCREDIBLE feminist AF drama which I will absolutely LOVE.

Her performance is good too. The moment where she calls everyone out on their misogyny is glorious to watch. I’ve seen some reviews state she was the wrong choice, and that she feels too modern for a 1970s character. To those people I say, you’re wrong. I won’t debate this, I won’t explain this, but you are wrong.

The weakest part, for me, is the narrative. The fact he was on a tv show (you know, the whole selling point of the film) doesn’t matter. It’s not his appearance on TV that leads to his downfall, his downfall wasn’t until the next year. So really, the main crux of the film is entirely inconsequential. It’s still a good watch, but I do wish that more things mattered, that the timeline was more coherent, and that the side characters were memorable. So much focus went on the “serial killer on a dating show”, that it feels that not enough effort was put on anything else in the narrative, so it feels incredibly underbaked.

That being said, there is one BRILLIANT scene that’s not set on the show. The date. Specifically, the aftermath when she’s creeped out by him in the car park. It’s CHILLING, and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on edge. It’s also (I imagine), a scene in which pretty much every woman alive has a “yeah that happened to me too. When? Well the first time was when I was 12, then the next time it was-” series of anecdotes which are similar.

In summary, an easy film to be impressed by. An easy film to be moved by. But also a film in which you can’t help but feel there’s something better from the creators in the future.

Gladiator II (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: After his home is conquered by the tyrannical emperors who now lead Rome, Lucius is forced to enter the Colosseum and must look to his past to find strength to return the glory of Rome to its people.

Some films are successful financially, some critically, some are successful in terms of their influence on pop culture and some are on my list of favourites of the year. A film rarely manages to hit all the targets. Gladiator 2 manages it. Two of those are assumptions, but they’re fairly safe ones. I wasn’t that big a fan of Ridley Scotts’ last two films (Napoleon and The Last Duel, as reviewed here and here) but Gladiator 2: Electric Boogaloo is a great example of what he can do.

The performances are all great. Surprisingly, Matt Lucas is in it. He’s only in it for around 3 minutes but evidently, that was enough for him to be named in the opening credits, which elicited a noticeable “wait, what the f*ck?” reaction in the screening I was in. Derek Jacobi seems to be in it only to make a connection with the first movie. Pedro Pascal continues to be incredible. Paul Mescal is at times brilliant, but there are a few moments where he feels too much like a character from Skins. He is genuinely one of my favourite performers so I love that he’s getting trusted to lead films like this. Denzel Washington is damn superb, injecting his character of Macrinus with a sense of dangerous playfulness.

Gladiator 2: More Lions is helped by how well-defined the characters are. Here are the characters:

A young man with a claim to the throne who is a skilled fighter, showing no mercy to those he defeats and is on a one-person mission to kill.

A general who has become jaded with the constant wars he is sent to fight in, he plans to overthrow the bloodthirsty emperors so he doesn’t have to keep watching young men die in needless wars.

A former slave with ambitions of governance and a strong sense of what is right.

A ruler thrust into a position he is ill-suited for. Since a young age, he has suffered cognitive erosion in his brain. His own brother/co-ruler clearly pities and doesn’t respect him, with his only friend being a pet monkey.

Let’s say you didn’t know this was a Gladiator movie, if you read those character synopsis, would you know FOR CERTAIN which ones are heroes and villains? That’s the beauty of Gladiator 2: Citizens On Patrol. Every character is clearly the hero of their own story. They’re all incredibly believable as real people, which really helps the story because it means character motivations are easier to gauge, they don’t need to say out loud “No, this revelation has now made me sad and reconsider my feelings on the matter”.

Gladiator 2: The Second Story also looks GREAT, sometimes. There are no shots which you would print and hang on your wall, but the battles and fights all look REAL. When characters get shot by an arrow, it doesn’t feel like an action movie, it feels like reality. Even the deaths of unnamed characters are injected with the shock and fear that they would have in reality. The Naumachia is a masterpiece of combat cinema in terms of staging and tenseness. You get the feeling that the characters who survive don’t do so because they’re special or talented, but because they were lucky. The deaths are also VERY brutal, with stabbings galore. Oddly enough, the “smallest” blade death felt the most painful. Probably because it involved a needle going into someone’s ear and that instantly sets me off. Some people will criticise it for historical inaccuracy, but lets be honest, nobody is studying this as a piece of historical truth. There’s an unspoken understanding that this is entirely fictional, but possibly featuring real people. But that doesn’t mean it can’t teach us history. You can’t use it for facts and dates, but it does do a pretty good job of showing what life could be like on a day-to-day basis.The idea that someone could rise from slave to emperor was not only an ideal, it happened. So in some ways, it was more advanced and egalitarian than modern society. But in other ways, they still had slaves, so fuck ’em.

On the downside, some of the visuals look fake as shit. There’s one near the end which is particularly awful in terms of realness. The other downside is some of the characters feel like they only exist to die. There’s a character we meet in the opening scene who, from the second you see them, you know they’re going to be killed.

Whilst I’m talking about the opening; the opening credits take place over a series of watercolour painting recreations of the first movie. A stunningly beautiful way of doing it, and very unique.

It’s when it does stuff like this that Gladiator 2: Back 2 Da Hood is strongest. When it’s unique, showing its creative flourish. It’s when it does what every other film does that it’s at its weakest. When you feel you’ve seen this before. When it foreshadows a bit too obviously.

These are minor quips though. Still a damn fine movie and well worth checking out at the cinema. I mean, what else are you going to do, spend time in the wonderful grey and bleak weather of winter? Nope, go to a cinema, buy a hot chocolate, and stay warm watching what I’m sure will become a classic movie.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: I feel the title adequately explains it.

As we approach the end of the year, I’m starting to think of the awards I will give out in January, and try to note the contenders for each award. Some are pretty much settled (Worst Moment is likely to go to Twisters for a character introduction that tainted the rest of the film). In contrast, some still require a lot of thinking (the Most Disappointing category is depressingly packed so far). One award that won’t be given is Best Title, if it was, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (HVSCSP, pronounced Hoo-vis-car-seep) would win that easily. I love that title, it promises so much. Not just the plot, but also the type of film it will be. A title like that is not going to be an incredibly depressing look at the human condition. It will be quirky, and it will be unique.

What you might not expect is just how damn sweet it is. It’s incredibly heart-warming, with the central relationship being more believable and recognisable than a vampire story should be. Some writers would have focused on the sexual energy of vampires, but HVSCSP is more sweat than sexual, and is all the better for it. I love the central relationship. There’s a moment between the two where they’re just sitting listening to music. There’s no dialogue, no dancing, they’re just sitting near each other. By all logic, that should be boring as hell. But it says something about the talent of director Ariane Louis-Seize, plus the performers Sara Montpetit and Felix-Antoine Benard that it works. You can tell there are moments when both of them want to speak, and you know exactly what they would say, and the characters know that too, so they want to respond, but because it wasn’t actually said, they don’t. That scene is a microcosm of the film as a whole; incredibly sweet and wholesome.

I’ve seen some reviews which have stated they wished this had more bite. I’m assuming they only said that for pun purposes. Cynicism and meanness would have ruined this. Yes, vampire movies usually do need to be dark and broody, but this particular film? It needs niceness. It’s like a Wes Anderson movie being caressed by Tim Burton.

Don’t get me wrong, there is some violence, but it’s used to tell a story. The killing of the clown in the opening scene is shown to have traumatised Sasha, so it makes sense that even with the ability to do so, she would be reticent to commit violence unless she needed to. This builds up beautifully to a moment where she violently attacks a group of people threatening Paul. If the film was filled with violence, that scene wouldn’t land. If the violence was shot as “cool” and fun, that moment wouldn’t land. HVSCSP understands restraint better than a German dungeon mistress and uses it to great joy.

It’s not perfect. The soundtrack is kind of bland. The aforementioned scene of the two listening to music together? Perfect song choice. The rest of the movie? Forgettable. I’m not saying EVERY film needs more 80’s dark synth music, but some Bauhaus would have improved this immensely.

I also found it difficult to get a solid grounding on the universe contained within HVSCSP. Are people aware of vampires but decide to ignore them? Are they aware but deathly scared? Do they consider vampires as mythological creatures? There are moments which support all three assertions, so it’s difficult to work out what world this takes place in. This leads me to the other problem; with the exception of the main two, the characters are all tremendously bland. It doesn’t feel like a real group of people, they’re not main characters in their own life, they’re only supporters of the tale we’re being told right now.

This is still a lovely film. It’s not among the best of the year, but it’s worth watching, even if only once.

Paddington In Peru (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A bear goes to a certain South American country to go meet with his adoptive mother. I can’t remember which country though, or the name of the bear.

Paddington In Peru (Or PIP, which is pronounced the only way you can pronounce it, but in a lilting tone) was a special occasion for me. I didn’t catch the first two at the cinema because I assumed they were standard kids’ films. I, of course, now know better and can appreciate their genius. So PIP was the first one I caught at the cinema, and I’m very glad I did. There was concern that the team would be different. Paul King wasn’t directing due to his Wonka commitments, Sally Hawkins would not be returning (but her character would), and neither would Peter Capaldi or Michael Gambon, the latter due to being a bit busy with that whole “no longer being alive” trend that’s so popular among the favourite celebrities of my youth.

I’ll assuage those fears now; PIP is very good. It’s not quite as good as the first two movies, but very few films are. If you weren’t aware there was a change behind the scenes, it wouldn’t be noticeable. The film is still charming, still very funny with few joke opportunities missed, and still weird. The Paddington movies exist in their own universe. They have a definite FEEL to them. They feel like musicals where everybody is too busy to sing. There’s a sense of playfulness and visual music which a new director would need to stick to. Dougal Wilson continues the tradition set down by Paul King. The universe of PIP is the same one established in the first two. Essentially, it’s a universe that you’d find in a cliche terrible 1970s sitcom, where every “I’m glad nobody saw that” is followed by a bus driving by. That doesn’t happen in real life, mainly because our bus services are practically useless. So you have to go in expecting silliness. But it would also seem very out of place if characters started levitating and time-travelling to solve their problems. It’s a tricky balancing act between realism and silliness, which these films manage perfectly.

The replacement of Mary Brown is much more noticeable. Sally Hawkins is deeply missed in these films. Well, she would be if Emily Mortimer wasn’t so damn good. Both performers play the character similarly, but each brings something unique to the part. Eventually, you do get used to the differences, but it does take a few minutes to adjust.

I do wish more of the neighbours returned, although I’m not sure how that would have happened. Some of them are there in the opening, but it feels more like an obligation to fans than genuine. As it is, I can’t really see a way they could be in it without it seeming jarring, but still. That might be because there are not quite as many notable replacements. There’s Olivia Colman, who people keep forgetting is REALLY good at comedy. Antonio Banderas is a lot of fun, but I do kind of wish he was Pedro Pascal. Banderas does handle the emotional moments PERFECTLY though, so props to him for that. Rachel Zegler was originally cast in PIP, and I have been impressed in the few films I’ve seen her in so far (Shazam! Fury Of The Gods as reviewed here, and the Hunger Games prequel as reviewed here), so I have no doubt that she would have fit perfectly into the Paddington universe. She was replaced (due to Zegler’s participation in the 2023 SAG-AFRTA strike, on the side of the strikers, because Zegler is awesome) by Carla Tous. Carla Tous doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, and I haven’t even heard of anything she’s been in, let alone watched it. That doesn’t matter, as I LOVE her performance in this. I think she’s better than Zegler would have been, mainly because Zegler would feel too confident. Tous’s performance is full of worry and sadness, and that’s forever etched on her face and in her vocal performance. It’s strange that in a film starring Olivia Colman (one of THE best performers in the world), I was most impressed with a performer who is a complete stranger to me. I really hope to see her in more stuff in the future, very impressive.

In summary, I loved this movie. Is it the best movie of the year? Nope. But it is probably the one I want to go back to most. It’s just so damn charming. I’m a cynical and miserable person most of the time, and I like it when films manage to break through that.

Red One (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Santa gets kidnapped.

Studios put a lot of thought into release dates for big movies. Sometimes it’s to avoid competition with a similar release which may split the audience and negatively affect the box office, sometimes because it wants to be in people’s minds when they nominate films for awards, and sometimes it is to make use of certain demographics (releasing kids films during the summer holidays etc). With that in mind, it is truly baffling why Red One, a Christmas movie, was released in the first week of November, which despite what the adverts on television may be telling you, is not Christmas. I can’t imagine there’s much crossover between the intended audience of Red One, and the intended audience for Night Bitch or the new Lord Of The Rings. There are only two ways I can justify it;

  1. They need it to fail so they can recoup the losses in some form of Hollywood accounting BS
  2. It’s going to be released on streaming services just before Christmas.

There is, of course, the possibility that they want this to be a slow-burn success, that audiences will be so impressed by what they see that they will tell their friends, who will then tell their friends and sooner or later everyone will go see it.

If they wanted that, they should have made a better movie. It’s not terrible, it’s just deeply deeply flawed. The main issue is one of tone. It’s not sure whether it wants to be a family-friendly Christmas adventure or an action movie. At times, it seems like it’s aimed at children, with infantile references and simple narratives, but then there are sexual references and mid-level swears which you’d expect in a mild 15.

I wasn’t a fan of Chris Evans in this. He’s usually very good, and he can do comedy. But for some reason, his style didn’t work in this. It’s hard to buy him as a regular human, even when he is standing next to The Rock. I should point out, that there’s a moment where Nick Kroll gets possessed, and the vocal performance is bad to the point of embarrassment. Other than that, most of the performances are fine, and it’s always nice to see Bonnie Hunt.

There are also pacing issues. It takes FAR too long to get to the point. The opening also repeats itself or says things that could have been saved for later. Personally, I think we should have stayed with Chris Evans character before moving to the mystical part, then our experiences would have been similar to his, with our eyes and minds slowly being shown the magic.

The magic is the best part. Red One incorporates so many worldwide Christmas myths and legends that it’s almost an educational experience. I really enjoy the way they incorporate Gryla. I kind of wish they put more in, but I suppose the hope was to save them for sequels.

In summary; disposable fun, that really should have been released either straight to streaming or closer to Christmas. At the moment, it feels like it’s been sent out to die, and it doesn’t deserve that.

Don’t Move (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: When a killer injects her with a paralytic agent, a woman must run, fight and hide before her body completely shuts down.

Did Netflix gaslight us into thinking their original films used to be good? I thought they were, but looking at the list, there’s a lot of shit there. Well, maybe “shit” is a bit harsh, but for every Glass Onion, there are about 40 Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga‘s, films which are so forgettable that they barely register as being watched. Maybe Don’t Move will be different?

It starts promising, it sets the tone very quickly, and it’s really interesting. The opening kidnapping is shocking, not just because of how sudden it is, but also how cold and calculating it is. You can really see how the killer lures his victims. He picks up character information so quickly, incredibly observant. He’s essentially a detective who uses his powers for evil.

I like how minimalist DM is. There are a few other characters, but it is mostly just Finn Witrock and Kelsey Asbille. Finn Wittrock is good, but he never really feels like an individual, instead coming off as a mix between Bill “Pennywise” Skarsgard, Casey “Not Ben” Affleck and Leonardo “No Don’t Turn 26, you’re so pretty” DiCaprio. Asbille does A LOT considering she’s paralyzed for the majority of the runtime. She has tremendous eye-acting, which is essential because that’s the only way she portrays emotion for most of it. The small cast allows the talents of the two leads to really shine. It also helps Asbille’s character seem more isolated. This could have been TERRIBLE if it cut to her previous life too often (as was done in The Mercy) in an attempt to examine her life. Because we only see her in the context of a kidnapping victim, we feel scared and isolated alongside her; all we know in this world is her and her kidnapper.

I do have some issues with the script though. Not that it’s bad, but I feel it wastes potential. Whilst DM is good, it could (née, should) have been great. Her losing her body autonomy (we call that “Being An American Woman”) should have taken place in real-time, it lasts 10 minutes onscreen instead of the (I think) 20 it was said to have taken. Adding the extra 10 would have made it so much more interesting. That’s the case for the whole film actually. It’s crying out for a gimmick. Maybe that’s real-time, so we get LONG shots of her being driven to the cabin the kidnapper hopes to keep her in, the longer the drive, the more we become aware of just how hopeless her situation is. Maybe it could have done the always impressive long take, making it seem like it was all filmed in one take (as in Boiling Point and 1917) with scenes of forestry masking cuts and time jumps. Maybe if it was all from her POV, so we are truly in her shoes, feeling her fear and helplessness. Any one of those would have made it a genuinely impressive feature and would have helped it stand out. As it is, it’s just pretty good.

It’s a shame to watch a film and get distracted by what it is instead of what it could be. But this isn’t quite refined enough to distract you, so you can’t really help but let your mind wander. It’s a great concept, but there’s not quite enough in the narrative it to justify stretching it out to feature length instead of just having it as a short. It’s not, but it does have big “based on a short story” energy. This is where a gimmick would have helped it, it would have hidden the narrative swamp of boredom.

Juror #2 (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Justin Kemp (Hoult) is called to jury duty for a man accused of murdering his girlfriend, a man Kemp knows is innocent because the actual killer was him, during a distressing car journey home on that night.

I will admit, I was a little lost going into this as I hadn’t seen Juror #1.

Now that that terrible joke is out of the way, I can get serious. I’m not going to, but the option is there. Juror #2 can best be described as a competent movie. It’s possibly Clint Eastwood’s last movie as a director and a fine film to exit on. Eastwood is a good director, but let’s face it, his real talent is picking really good scripts. That continues with this, where his directing never really gets better than “serviceable”. Actually, that’s mean, I suppose “functional” would be more accurate. There are no bad visual moments, but nothing that will really impress you.

Something like this isn’t about the visuals though, it’s all about the story and the performances, both of which are pretty damn fine. It’s not perfect. There are definitely a few scenes that don’t do enough to justify their inclusion. That’s especially disappointing in a legal thriller. When you watch a film based on truths coming out, where characters are trying to hide their past actions etc, you expect things to matter. If a random scene happens, you expect that it’s actually important and will matter. There’s a scene here where the main character picks up the phone that belongs to the lead prosecutor (played by the About A Boy pairing of Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette) after she accidentally drops it in the car park. There are a lot of ways this could have come up again; maybe she uses it to get his fingerprints, and maybe she will remember something about him later on. Nope, nothing. It doesn’t even tell us anything about the characters. That’s followed by another scene which is an intro to jury duty, again, completely unnecessary. It feels like it was only there because the writer did their research into what happens before you serve on jury duty, found out that you go into a room and watch a video before the trial starts, and wanted to show off that research.

There’s some great character work here. So many of the jury members have enough backstory and motivations to come off as believable. It would be nice if a few more of them were fleshed out, especially because of all the wasted scenes. There’s one weird character. Harold, played by JK Simmons is written almost TOO well. He’s a former detective who takes an interest in the case. His interest in the case gets him kicked off the jury, which is realistic. He then doesn’t appear again. Soooooooo, what was the point of that? Are we to believe that he just stopped? “Well, I’m not part of the case anymore, so who gives a shit?” If anything, he would feel more free. He can investigate it as a private citizen on his free time now he’s not locked in a jury room all day.

The performances? Pretty damn good. Why don’t films cast Nicholas Hoult as a leading man in romance films? He has the best eyes. The rest are pretty good, it is weird to see so many English actors in SUCh an American movie. Zoey Deutch is a delight, as she always is. Eastwood does cast his daughter, but it’s a minor role, the kind of role that’s okay for a nepotism hire as you’re not exactly going to get a major performer in such a small role.

The Wild Robot (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Roz (short for ROZZUM unit 7134, nothing to do with Peri Gilpin’s character from Frasier) is a helper robot with nobody to help after the cargo ship delivering her crashed into an island. After being rejected by the local wildlife she finds herself as the de facto mother of Brightbill, the lone surviving gosling (of the non-Ryan variety) of a Roz-related accident which killed off his entire family.

I very rarely go to see kids’ films at the cinema, especially not ones without what I would deem an appropriate “in”. I think it’s perfectly acceptable for an adult to go see a Pixar film, for example, but there are some for which it would be a bit weird to see a lone adult male in the screening. As such, I don’t often see trailers for those films. This meant I didn’t really know what The Wild Robot (TWR: pronounced Too-war) was about. I knew the title, and I knew it was supposed to be above average. But the story? Not a clue. The actors? No idea. The animation style? Nope. I didn’t even know if it was American, Japanese, English, French, or even from the Anconine Republic (although if you googled that country you’d be sceptical about whether an animated film would be released in 2024 that was made in that country).

The opening is “shot” from a weird fish-eye POV, so I was slightly worried that the whole thing would be like that, thankfully it’s not. I still didn’t entirely vibe with the animation style though. It’s incredible sometimes, with things moving with a beautiful fluidity and realness. But then there are times when the animals (the fox voiced by Pedro Pascal is the clearest example) almost seem TOO fluid like they’re made from watercolour paintings. On their own, that’s fine, but alongside the backgrounds, it’s jarring from a visual perspective. Mostly, the visuals are superb though. The world looks real, trees have imperfections, grass sways in the wind, and the sky is awe-inspiring in terms of colours (especially in the closing third).

I have a few nitpicks with the story itself. Some story beats move unnaturally quickly, and characters trust each other too quickly, to the point it seems like it’s setting some of them up for third-act heel turns. It doesn’t feel like a singular narrative at times, there’s no sense of the world flowing towards the natural conclusion. Instead, it feels like the story is being told by a kid who has joined an improv group “This happens. Then this happens, and then this happens”.

That’s a very mild criticism though, TWR is an incredibly easy film to fall in love with. Kids will (hopefully) love it, and there’s enough in there to keep parents entertained without resorting to the cliche Shrek-style “penis jokes that will go over the heads of children”. There’s no sense of cynicism or misery to TWR, it’s an experience which fills you with hope. The performances are all pitch-perfect, but it’s still weird to hear Matt Berry in a kids’ film as you keep expecting him to call someone an arsehole. Catherine O’Hara continues to be a delight. Stephanie Hsu is good, but criminally underutilized. Lupita Nyong’o is the true heart, and her performance beats beautifully. Kit Connor is pretty great too, but really it’s a showcase for Nyongo’s vocal work. She provides a good mix of humanity and confused AI.

At the start of the year, I looked at what was due out and had mentally already placed Paddington In Peru as the winner for “best kids film”, partly based on knowing that Inside Out 2 was going to hit adults MUCH harder than it would kids. For most of the year, the marmalade magnificence still had no competition, but now with both Transformers One and The Wild Robot? Paddington is going to have its work cut out, especially with the recasting issues. TWR isn’t just good, it’s magical.