Weekend Watch: The Wild Robot, My Old Ass

A charming animated offering and a heartwarming coming-of-age-tale

Image Credit: Universal Pictures

Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Lupita Nyong’o is raising a gosling and Aubrey Plaza is advising her past self. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite

While DreamWorks Animation has been happily churning out franchise entries for the last few years, it has occasionally dipped its toe into original titles, though given that the likes of last year’s Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken didn’t connect with audiences, the team would be forgiven for being nervous about trying again so soon (yes, yes, I do understand how long it takes for an animated movie to be produced).

But with Chris Sanders –– who previously worked on such huge DreamWorks hits as the first How To Train Your Dragon–– at the helm, it had more reason for confidence. And indeed, the resulting film is something to behold.

Lupita Nyong’o here voices Rozzum 7134, AKA Roz, the robot at the heart of the story. She’s an enthusiastic droid looking for a task, but unfortunately her transport carrier crashed on an island devoid of people. Undaunted, she zeroes in on various animals and birds, eager to find out who ordered her and how she can help, but mostly the local fauna is terrified of her. Once she bridges the communication gap, she can finally start to reach out properly, but an incident with a bear leads to her accidentally destroying a goose’s nest.

Still, it gives her a first proper task, raising the surviving gosling whose egg was undamaged in the incident. The chick, who she ends up naming Brightbill (voiced once he’s older by Kit Connor), is something of a runt, but together he can learn to flourish and, more importantly, migrate once winter comes.

Sanders’ touch is still present here, and combined with beautiful, watercolor-inspired animation, a quality voice cast (Nyong’o is typically great, and the likes of Pedro Pascal, Bill Nighy, Mark Hamill and Stephanie Hsu all offer lively performances) and a solid script adapted from Peter Brown’s book, The Wild Robot is a lovely meditation on friendship, parenthood and kindness as a survival instinct.

The Wild Robot is in US cinemas now. It’ll arrive in the UK on 18 October.

Image Credit: Amazon MGM Studios

It’s a good time to be a fan of Aubrey Plaza. She’s bewitching viewers on Agatha All Along (which I wrote about last week), has a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and is also popping up in one of the sweetest indie movies to happen along in a while.

My Old Ass, written, and directed by Megan Park, has an intriguing concept: Elliott (Maisy Stella) goes with her friends to an island for an 18th birthday celebration, which includes magic mushrooms. As part of her trip, Elliott meets her 39-year-old future self (Plaza) who has life lessons to offer in snarky style, but is loathed to warn her exactly why she should stay away from a fellow teen named Chad (Percy Hynes White), who has just started working at her family’s farm.

While Plaza is certainly fantastic in her limited screentime (including a moment later in the film that will absolutely shatter your heart), this is really Stella’s film. The young actor is a shining star in the movie, bringing Elliott to life as a curious, gay and ambitious woman. She and White have excellent chemistry and her entire family (which also includes Maria Dizzia and Alain Goulem as her parents and Seth Isaac Johnson and Carter Trozzolo as her brothers) are touching and funny in their own way.

Park finds a way to tell this story in heart-warming fashion without ever being schmaltzy, Stella’s character a helpful way to undercut any of that.

This is the sort of movie that does well at festivals but often gets overlooked in wider releases. Don’t sleep on it –– it’s one of my favourite films of the year.

My Old Ass is in UK and US cinemas now.