September 9th, 2016 
Charles Solomon 
Although 2016 brought us Norm of the North and Ratchet and Clank, The Wild Life is the odds-on favorite for the Worst Animated Film of the Year trophy. Despite the title, it’s an uninspired, overly tame movie that would once would have been consigned to the direct-to-video bin.
The story, credited to Lee Christopher, Domonic Paris and Graham Welldon uses a few fragments of DeFoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” in a rambling tale that supposedly extols the virtues of friendship.
Crusoe (Yuri Lowenthal) is a bumbling geographer who gets shipwrecked on a remote flyspeck of an island. It’s not clear where this adventure is supposed to be unfolding (the original Crusoe was marooned in the Caribbean): the islet is inhabited by animals from various continents, including a Pangolin, a Chameleon, an Echidna, a Macaw, a domestic goat, et al. The film is narrated by the Macaw (David Howard Thornton), whom Crusoe dubs “Tuesday,” the worst motorbeak since Alex in Walking with Dinosaurs. Although Tuesday and the other characters natter incessantly, none of them manages to say anything worth listening to.
As he befriends the animals, the inept Crusoe somehow builds an elaborate tree house, a beacon tower and an irrigation system. But everything is menaced by two nasty ship’s cats and their brood of kittens–a couple of undernourished cats are somehow a threat to a full-grown goat or human. The climax of the film is a seemingly endless set piece of the friendly beasts sliding down bamboo flumes that collapse under the pursuing cats. Vincent Kesteloot and Ben Stassen direct the sequence with too little energy for it to be exciting and timing too leaden for it to be funny.
Crusoe is eventually rescued by pirates, whom he finds so nasty, he flees back to the island and his animals chums. But over the credits, the viewer sees a pretty girl and a white parrot arrive, suggesting a sequel may already be in the works. Animation fans can only hope rising sea levels swamp the studio before it’s completed.
The Wild Life proves that even a low-budget (reportedly $13 million) CG film can boast convincing rendering: the feathers, rocks, rope and water all look right. But the lighting and design sense needed to make them visually interesting is sorely lacking. The generic-looking Crusoe could be the long-lost brother of Flint Lockwood in the Meatballs films, and the animation of the character is formulaic and unconvincing.
Perhaps the most damning thing about Wild Life is that’s so feeble, it can’t even annoy the hapless viewer. It just feels unnecessary.
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