JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A new animated adventure from the creators of "How To Train Your Dragon" hits theaters this weekend. It's called "The Wild Robot." And while it's based on a popular book series, critic Bob Mondello says its virtues are cinematic.
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BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: We hear a huge storm, then see a crate broken open on a rocky shore. A family of otters scramble all over something metal inside. One accidentally pushes a blue button...
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LUPITA NYONG'O: (As Roz, distorted) Hello, bonjour...
MONDELLO: ...And a robot comes to life.
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NYONG'O: (As Roz) Hola. Congratulations on your purchase of a Universal Dynamics robot. I am Rozzem 7134. A Rozzem always completes its task. Just ask.
MONDELLO: The otters look mystified.
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NYONG'O: (As Roz) Just ask.
MONDELLO: Then they're all hit by a wave. The robot can't swim, and there's a rock cliff behind it that it can't climb, either, until it spots a crab skittering up sideways...
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NYONG'O: (As Roz) Processing.
MONDELLO: ...And mimics it. Rozzem 7134, or Roz, as we'll get to know her, voiced by Lupita Nyong'o, is a resourceful robot - a problem solver, who, at the moment, lacks a problem to solve - a task, as she puts it. For a bit, she's in learning mode, observing the critters who inhabit this otherwise uninhabited island - that crab, for instance. Alas, when she picks him up, hoping he'll give her a task...
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NYONG'O: (As Roz) Do you need...
MONDELLO: ...He's snatched by a seagull.
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NYONG'O: (As Roz) ...Assistance?
MONDELLO: Efforts to bond with other critters don't go much better - butterflies swallowed by birds that get swallowed by wildcats...
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NYONG'O: Aggression detected.
MONDELLO: ...Until a goose egg hatches, and Roz keeps it from being swallowed by a fox. But then the gosling won't leave her - maybe not ever, as a possum mom explains.
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CATHERINE O'HARA: (As Pinktail) Goslings imprint on the first thing they see, which would be you. As far as he's concerned, you're his mother now.
NYONG'O: (As Roz) I do not have the programming to be a mother.
O'HARA: (As Pinktail) No one does. We just make it up.
NYONG'O: (As Roz) Without an assigned task, my next priority is to return to factory.
O'HARA: (As Pinktail) Taking care of him is your task now.
MONDELLO: To Roz, those are magic words.
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NYONG'O: (As Roz) Task acquired. Return mode delayed. A Rozzem always completes its task.
O'HARA: (As Pinktail) You're lucky you just have one. As a mother of seven...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, screaming).
O'HARA: (As Pinktail) ...Six babies, it's a full-time thing.
MONDELLO: Writer-director Chris Sanders is in familiar territory here, especially when it's time for Roz to teach her adolescent gosling to fly.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) He's got to leave this island by fall.
MONDELLO: He'd done something similar in "How To Train Your Dragon," after all. But computer graphics are better now. And in the service of Peter Brown's popular book series, Sanders takes advantage of some gorgeous digital tricks to establish how out of her element Roz, as an android interloper, is - watercolor-like forests and sunsets to contrast with Roz's hard, metallic surfaces. At one point, she comes upon a tree trunk so encrusted with resting butterflies that it all but explodes when they take flight. The images are stunning, even when the story takes more conventional turns.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) You do not belong here. This is a wilderness.
NYONG'O: (As Roz) And I am a wild robot.
MONDELLO: Also remarkable - Roz's transformation. Since her features can't change, she's basically two spheres plus limbs with tools attached. Still, her digitizers have tools, too. They mellow her movements as she adapts to AI motherhood, especially to the realization that she needs to let go. And Nyong'o's initially mechanical intonations soften as her character absorbs the film's message.
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NYONG'O: (As Roz) We must become more than we were programmed to be.
MONDELLO: The digitizers have done, in short, what their counterparts in real-world artificial intelligence haven't yet managed - giving their wild robot not just a mind of her own, but what could pass for a heart. I'm Bob Mondello.
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