Mike McCahill 

Robinson Crusoe review – a castaway tale that’s all washed up

By removing the element of danger from its plot, this Belgian animation, featuring a gallery of chatty animals, has nowhere to go
  
  

Full of helter-skelter turns … Robinson Crusoe
Full of helter-skelter turns … Robinson Crusoe Photograph: film company handout

Once known as The Wild Life, this Belgian-derived animation arrives at an idea that Pixar or DreamWorks would have nurtured – Defoe’s castaway, as observed by chatty animals – then does nothing very notable with it. Instead, there follows another stereoscopic runaround.

With the source’s peril diminished the minute this Crusoe is rescued in a prologue by jovial pirates, the directors are reduced to sending mangy wildcats on every 20 minutes to harass everybody. The tactic yields a limited form of enjoyment, but each helter-skelter turn throws up story and design elements you’ll have seen better programmed elsewhere. And it’s vicious anti-feline propaganda.

 

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