If your holiday wish was for a picture-perfect tale about celebrating our individuality while trashing someone’s house with their own red wine and decorations, consider Robin Robin a wish granted.
Created and directed by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please through Wallace and Gromit studio Aardman Animations, Robin Robin is a truly wondrous and impressively ambitious stop-motion film made for the holidays — but it’s just as easily enjoyed year round. Premiering at the BFI London Film Festival and coming to Netflix in November, the 30-minute film is one that will likely find itself firmly planted in holiday viewing lineups for folks of all ages.
Having fallen from her nest in the egg, Robin (Bronte Carmichael) has been raised by a family of mice. Led by their loving mouse dad (Adeel Akhtar), the family scurries into houses perfecting the art of stealth, pilfering crumbs of food and paraphernalia — if you loved Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox in this respect, you’ll love this as well. Not quite having the delicate touch of her family members, Robin struggles with her abilities in stealth and questions her place.
As a stop-motion film, Robin Robin is both incredibly beautiful and super playful in the medium. Crafted not of plasticine but of needle felt (a material not known for its malleability), this production is magical in its ambition — from a splattering snowball fight to an explosive fireworks display and a fast moving icy river. Every last frame of Robin Robin is a feast for the eyes, especially when there’s a literal feast being covertly ransacked by animals onscreen.
If you look closely at each scene, you can spot little Easter eggs — for example, the mouse family home, with its tree root bunks and leaf blankets, is filled with tiny bits and pieces humans would throw away, like the Grinch’s house but less brimming with banana peels and general hatred. Plus, it’s all beautifully scored by English duo The Bookshop Band, with a handful of truly memorable songs.
Christopher Robin star Carmichael is delightful voicing Robin, a character so determined to become a “real” mouse like her family that she fashions adorable mouse ears from her feathers. Not content to steal mere crumbs when she could aim for a whole juicy sandwich to prove her worthy of mousehood, Robin tries to infiltrate a house on her own, meeting new characters (both helpful and hungry) along the way — namely voiced by Gillian Anderson and Richard E. Grant.
Of course, you need a villain somewhere in this sweet tale. Anderson is perfectly chilling as classic bird/mouse nemesis Cat, without being too scary for young’uns. Lurking in her house of doom, she gets a nervously funny song about fitting in…her belly that is. “It’s what’s inside that counts” quite literally for Cat.
But stealing the entire show (and aiming for a certain “magic shiny wishing star”) is Grant as Magpie, collector of all things shiny and newfound friend to Robin. At the first screening of Robin Robin, the room absolutely erupted amid Magpie’s version of Robin’s song about the rules of stealing, grown-ups and kids alike. And Magpie gets his own song about loving THINGS which is reminiscent of Jermaine Clement’s Bowie-like “Shiny” as the villainous crab in Moana, combined with…well…Mr Burns’ “See My Vest” from The Simpsons. You’ll hear it.
Robin Robin is an ambitious, beautiful, technical triumph, a moving story of celebrating our individual strengths and differences, and a delightful tale that should be installed firmly on your holiday viewing rotation for life.