NoahGingerFox’s review published on Letterboxd:
Wow, just wow, I don’t even know where to begin, this film is just so good on so many different levels that I’ve had a real hard time writing my feelings down, but I’ll do my best. I guess I should start off with how gorgeous the animation is, all the different environments from the forest to the futuristic city are just so bright and wonderful, I adore the way this film is rendered, while it doesn’t go as hard as The Last Wish or Bad Guys, it doesn’t really need to as it meant to showcase the beauty (and perils) of nature rather than wow you with fast paced action sequences. I also love how films like ‘nature is beautiful, but also dangerous’, like after we get this beautiful shot of some butterflies, we immediately showcase a bunch of animals attacking and killing each other, it’s a little jarring, but I love it. The story is relatively simple, but I love that, like it’s nice to have an animated film which is so confident in the one story it’s got and doesn’t feel the need to pile any more on.
Something that surprised me was how funny this film was, not that I didn’t expect it to be, Chris Sanders is usually good at that and the trailers had a few jokes in them, but some of these jokes were genuinely hysterical, from the baby possums playing dead, to Roz’s failure to tell a bedtime story, to almost everything Matt Berry says, I laughed a lot more than I expected. But easily my favourite thing about this film is the characters themselves.
Roz herself is such a great character and is genuinely one of the best protagonists of any DreamWorks film, it’s incredible seeing her development throughout the film, starting off as pretty much a mindless robot just trying to find a task to complete, but when she’s given the task of raising Brightbill, you see her move away from her programming to become a real mother to him, it’s just so wholesome to watch, and she’s really funny and I love Lupita Nyong’o’s vocal performance. Brightbill himself isn’t the most entertaining character, he was cute as a gosling and seeing him imitate his robo-mum is kinda fun, but he’s definitely one of the weaker characters in this film, at least in my opinion, although he definitely gets his time to shine throughout the movie.
The mother son relationship in this film is also amazing, like we all knew the plot of this film was gonna be Rob trying to raise a gosling, but the way this comes about really caught me off guard and genuinely shocked me, although admittedly not too long after he got hatched, I kinda knew this was gonna be used for a whole ‘liar reveal’ scene that would drive a wedge between the two, but the thing that makes it work is that it’s revealed relatively early on, coming in roughly around the halfway point and it’s resolved pretty quickly as he hasn’t exactly got a choice but to go back to his robo-mum if he wants to migrate, so that was a nice change of pace.
The other characters are a lot of fun too, I like the Catherine O’Hara possum mum and especially her children, whether their fake dying or for real. The Mark Hamill bear was also a big standout who doesn’t seem all that special at first, but after he starts talking, he became one of my favourite characters in this. The Bill Nighy goose was also a really good character, not just because I love hearing Bill Nighy’s voice, but I love how he subverts the typical ‘Leader of the group who doesn’t like ones who are different’, but is instead rather supportive of Brightbill, but more surprising was how supportive he was to Roz, pretty much the only animal not to act hostile or scared of her, it’s neat he doesn’t care Roz is an outsider, he’s just impressed that Roz could make so much effort with a runt. The Matt Berry beaver was just brilliant, not just because Matt Berry has one of the best voices of any human being alive, but I like how he’s one of the first animals to show kindest to Roz despite the fact she destroyed his dam at the start of the film, and I absolutely love the payoff to this one joke with him that comes back during the climax. While not every character is great or memorable, like this one Marsellus Wallace hawk who kinda shows up a one point and I genuinely don’t remember if he ever speaks again in the film, or even the antagonist. While I love Stephanie Hsu’s performance and the fact she’s programmed to sound gleeful all the time just makes her more intimidating, she’s more of a pawn for Universal Dynamics who’s just following her programming, akin to the wheel from WALL-E, but to be fair this film’s story doesn’t really need a typical villain so I’ll give it a pass. Wow, so many cool characters, did I forget to mention any…
Oh yeah, I guess there’s this fox, I don’t really have that much to say about him.
That was a joke I actually have a lot to say about him, while Roz is factually the best character in this, with better development and who’s basically the heart of the entire film, my personal favourite has to be the Pedro Pascal Fox Fink, and no, this isn’t due to my fox biased since they’re the best creature in God’s green Earth, it’s because he’s just as well written as a character as Roz. Like while his character development isn’t as strong as Roz’s, it’s still really great to see this character who starts off as the typical trickster fox-type who just wants to use Roz to get food and protection, grow to genuinely care for both her and Brightbill and find companionship in them, like this guy went from trying to eat Brightbill when they were both unborn and newborn, to willing to straight up eat their bullies for them, now that’s development. But he also has some incredible one on ones with Roz, like after Brightbill migrates and they both joke about each other splitting up, like why does a conversation between a robot and fox feel more uncomfortably real than some of the human conversations I’ve seen this year. I also love how they avoid doing a second liar reveal with him, like when Roz figures out he isn’t really a goose expert, she’s isn’t upset that he lied, she’s more concerned that Brightbill might not learn how to fly before the migration. But on top of being a really compelling character, he’s also really funny, from using his mother’s unorthodox parenting skills on Brightbill, to his banter with other characters, from his willingness to leave a skunk to freeze to death for calling him a jerk, he’s great and Pedro Pascal does a fantastic job. I could go on longer but this reviews going on long enough and I think I should wrap this up.
All in all, while I haven’t read the books yet and don’t really know what could happen in the sequel, this film is still an absolutely outstanding work of art that is easily the best animated film I’ve seen this year, go watch it if you haven’t, you won’t regret it.
