After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose. (from IMDB)

Pixar has often been lauded for offering some of the most incredible (no pun intended) and impactful animated films to ever hit the silver screen. But through the years, DreamWorks Animation has risen through the ranks, often producing some titles that rival what Pixar has released. While there have most certainly been misses (Shark Tale and Ruby Gillman quickly come to mind), it's hard to count out movies like How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and even Shrek (or its superior sequel, Shrek 2). So when a movie like The Wild Robot comes around, and hearing that it's directed by Chris Sanders, who gave us How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo & Stitch, animated movie fans need to take notice.

The Wild Robot revolves around a helper robot named Roz that finds itself waking up alone on a remote island. As it tries to figure out how to help the animals around it, it ends up finding the need to care for and raise an orphaned gosling. Through the highs and lows of newfound parenthood, Roz discovers what it means to be a mother, in order to complete her task, all the while learning how to fit in as an outsider in the wild. It has the classic fish-out-of-water elements you'd expect from a story like this one, but it's brimming with heart, emotion, and surprises all along the way.

While watching The Wild Robot, moments and aspects of other films came to mind several times, but the movie as a whole has such an earnest spirit that it seems criminal to not let it stand on its own, apart from those other movies. Lupita Nyong'o gives a beautiful voice performance as the titular robot, Roz, and it's amazing how much - and how quickly - we grow to love her. The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal is almost unrecognizable as a mischievous yet lovable fox named Fink who ends up helping Roz on her journey. And that little gosling is just too cute. When he grows up a bit, Kit Connor delivers a wonderful performance as well.

My family and I had the pleasure of seeing the movie early, and we ended up taking the opportunity to see it a second time while we could. I enjoyed it even more on the second viewing. It's one of those movies where you're not exactly sure what to expect going in, or you have a vague idea what to expect, and the end result ends up being quite different. So, going into it a second time knowing how the story plays out and what to expect, I found the emotional elements of the story hitting me stronger the second time around. As a parent, it's easy to relate to what Roz experiences in trying to raise the gosling -- the highs and lows, the fears and triumphs -- and The Wild Robot handles it with a fair mix of humor and emotion, just like parenthood really brings. After Roz learns all of the languages of the animals native to the island, we hear them all speaking English so we can understand them, too, and this is when the other animal characters start taking shape. Fink is a fox who doesn't have any friends on the island, and really starts hanging around Roz because he'd love to eat the gosling as a snack. But through the journey of these characters, Fink finds a true, and unlikely, bond with the robot -- and it's in that kind of special friendship, amidst a world where we can tend to feel disconnected, that we can relate to how Fink feels. And while Roz is treated as the scary metal monster that you'd expect her to be seen as by a land filled with woodland creatures, her poor treatment doesn't have quite as much weight knowing she has no feelings. But Roz is the kind of robot that defies her own programming, taking on more humanistic characteristics as the story progresses. The story has some surprises as it moves along, for sure, and it can keep the viewer on the edge of their seat, wondering what might happen to these characters next.

One story theme we found surprising was a cavalier handling of the topic of death. While some of it comes from the way Fink handles his prey, a lot of it is treated with a great deal of lightheartedness by a group of possums - particularly a mother and her babies. But even when she thinks one of them dies suddenly at the hand of a predator off screen, she's shockingly matter-of-fact about it, not seeming to care. And when the baby turns up alive moments later, she's almost disappointed. On the one hand, the wild - with the circle of life and food chain as it is - is a seriously rough place, and death is just part of the norm. Still, if your kids are sensitive to the idea of death (as I know some children can be), you'll want to either keep that in mind ahead of time, or be prepared for some hearty conversation afterwards.

With that said, the movie is very much a PG-rated affair. Language is limited to mostly two uses of "sucks," but there's also a moment where an animal calls foul on something another animal says and exclaims "male bovine excrement!" which is merely a roundabout way to imply "bullsh..." (male bovine= bull. Excrement=....) It's minor, I admit, but it still surprised me to hear it (and it definitely went over my 13-year-old's head). The animal-on-animal violence can be surprising, if not a little jarring, too. One shocking and humorous moment shows Roz holding a bird that is then attacked by another animal that is then attacked by another animal, and so on. At one point, the dismembered head of the bird briefly lands in Roz's fingers before she drops it out of sight. Another scene has Fink grabbing a live crab, shoving it into a boiling puddle of water to kill it, and then casually ripping its arms/claws off to eat it. (Again, shocking in a humourous way.) There's also a sad moment where Roz finds a dead bird (a different one), and while we don't see the carcass, she lifts up the animal's wing (the rest of the body remains unseen) and drops it, to show that it has no life to it. She also finds some broken egg shells from ones that had been crushed as well. There is other violence in the film, but some of it is slapstick and some of it is action-based, but none of it is particularly graphic in nature (albeit, sometimes it is a little on the intense side).

Beautifully animated, wonderfully acted, emotionally charged and just all-around an excellent animated film, The Wild Robot is one of the best films of the year, and one well worth experiencing on the biggest screen possible. We're all ready to check this one out on IMAX on release week.