By Emilio Frenk
Director: Vincent Kesteloot
Cast (Voice in English): Yuri Lowenthal, David Howard, Laila Berzins, Joey Carmen, Sandy Fox, Colin Metzger, Marieve Herington and Jeff Doucette.
Rating: Poor.
This year has been remarkable for animated feature films like "Zootopia", "Finding Dory" and "Kubo and the Two Strings".Although there are always exceptions and this year was with “The Wild Life”, an animated that didn’t fulfill any expectations.
The movie starts with Mak (David Howard) a daring parrot who dreams of leaving an isolated in the South Pacific; although he has other animal friends but everyday it passes he gets bored.
Everything will change for Mak when he meets Robinson Crusoe (Yuri Lowenthal) a british explorer who gets trapped in the island after a severe storm. This will lead to a friendship and an opportunity for Mak to leave the island.
The major problem I had with “The Wild Life” was both the story and animation. I figured that is based on the novel “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Dafoe and it´s a different approach to the novel.
The plot was not clear of the film and the animation of the film and this was also a factor why I didn’t enjoy it. Movies of this genre have to have a meaning and the pacing has to be crucial and eventually it led to boredom.
The different approach from Dafoe’s book I thought it was interisting but the execution in terms of Screenplay was very badly written and the direction from Vincent Kesteloot was all over the place.
I´ve always mentioned that storytelling the animated genre has been superior than any genre in filmmaking but here this wasn´t the case.
If this movie would have involved more work in storytelling I think it would have been a very interesting concept.
I was never engaged with “The Wild Life” from the minute it started and with that being said is one of the biggest dissapointments in the anmated genre.