The Wild Life (Robinson Crusoe) (2016) Review

I almost didn't want to review this movie. Hardly anybody went to see it, so why should I waste my time talking about something that deservedly bombed on opening weekend? Was anyone even excited for this after watching the trailer? I sure as heck wasn't. Well, I'm doing this because I like talking about the animation medium for everyone's enjoyment.

The Wild Life tells the tale of Robinson Crusoe who gets stranded on an island. As he tries to survive, he encounters this group of animals. They do not trust him, rather, they fear him. One exception is this macaw named Mak, who becomes fascinated with the man. Slowly, the other animals begin to view him as a friend and assist him in surviving the island.

Despite a somewhat interesting premise, it's boring, generic, and uninspired. There is a pointless in medias res opening that tells us how the characters came to be which may as well have started at the actual beginning. Mak provides some unnecessary narration, sometimes even telling us what we're looking at now, or to clear up something that the audience already knows what another character is talking about. In other words, the movie thinks we're idiots.

The characters in this movie are bland and boring, lacking in terms of personality. Crusoe is only known for one character trait and that is "bumbling." There isn't much character development for him. Only Mak leaves somewhat of an impression because not only is he just the narrator, he is the one we spend time with the most. He is curious about the world outside of the island and wants to see proof of it. All of the other animals are just there to react badly about the human that they discover.

The villains, those being the two cats whose names I forgot, are a joke and do not have a reason for being there. Not every story, especially one about getting stranded on an island, need villains. Did Cast Away need a villain? Did The Martian need one? The answer to both is no. Their motivation for hating Crusoe is even stupid. They antagonize him all because he wouldn't let them eat a live chicken, so they do whatever they can to make him suffer. If this is not disproportionate retribution, then I don't know what is.

The "comedy," if you want to call it that, is absolutely absent. All of the jokes that I think the movie attempts fall flat on their face. There is this running gag about a blind goat being, well, blind. That is about the most the movie can offer. On the showing that I unfortunately attended, the only audience members in the auditorium were a mother and her two sons and they made little to no reactions at the film's attempt at comedy. I assume that they were bored throughout this movie.

The voice acting in The Wild Life can range from tolerable to kind of cringeworthy. It's as if the English voice actors (I forgot to mention that this is Belgian film) just phoned it in and made off with their paychecks. The lines that they deliver are poorly executed that adds to how boring the movie is. By the way, am I the only one who thought Mak was voiced by James Arnold Taylor? He is not, though every time he speaks, he sounds like Ratchet and it's kind of distracting.

The film's animation is a mixed bag for me. If there is one way to describe it, it sometimes goes between feature animation quality to a direct-to-video movie, mostly leaning towards the latter. On the one hand, it has a lot of nicely-detailed textures, especially when it comes to the water (though nowhere as pleasing as The Good Dinosaur) and the fur on some of the animals. It's at least visually pleasing to look at. The character animations, on the other hand, are about as on-par as a direct-to-video movie. Not only do the characters look generic, but they don't move as naturally, especially the humans. It honestly makes me wonder why this even bothered to be released in theaters.

There are also shots that are obviously trying to use the 3-D gimmick. I did not watch it in 3-D but I still noticed a lot of these objects that look like they are trying to pop out of the screen to... immerse the viewers, I guess? Well, they're not doing a good job at it. How to Train Your Dragon, it is not.

For a movie that ran for about 90 minutes, it sure as heck felt like I sat through it even longer. Throughout its runtime, I had one expression and that was a lack thereof. Okay, that is not entirely true. I will admit that it held my attention in some parts, but struggled everywhere else.

The Wild Life is a giant waste of time. The story is uninspired and uninteresting (and boring), the characters are one-dimensional (and boring), the villains are unnecessary (and boring), the "comedy" is absent, and the animation is painfully sub-par. By the way, did I also mention that it was boring?!

The reason that I did not review it right away was because it sucked whatever joy I had left in me that I needed time to rethink my life. I don't know what is worse, this or Ice Age: Collision Course. The former bored me, while the latter annoyed me so much. Whatever the case, I deem The Wild Life as...

SOMETHING AWFUL