The animated adventure "The Wild Robot," based on Peter Brown's 2016 children's book, is set to sweet mode, as if it was a preinstalled factory setting. It's heartwarming the way a latter-era Coldplay track is heartwarming: by design, so its effect feels somewhat synthetic.

Lupita Nyong'o voices ROZZUM 7134, a robot who crash lands in the wilderness and goes about trying to be useful, as she is wired to do. Her first piece of business is deciphering the language of the animals around her, so soon they're all speaking English, as helpful for her as it is for viewers.

ROZZUM (she goes by "Roz" for short) is clumsy at first, and after accidentally wiping out a nest, she takes care of an egg left behind and helps it hatch safely. She goes on to treat the emerging baby gosling as her own child, and "The Wild Robot" becomes a tale of motherhood, the anxieties and fears that come with parenting, and the difficulty of letting go when it's time to let one's children enter the world on their own.

Kit Connor voices Brightbill, the orphaned baby goose whom Roz nurtures; Pedro Pascal plays a sly fox, Bill Nighy is an older goose and Ving Rhames is a falcon who helps Brightbill learn to fly. Written and directed by Chris Sanders ("Lilo & Stitch," "How to Train Your Dragon"), "The Wild Robot" has earned moments of tenderness that it drowns out in its latter half with a treacly, overloud Maren Morris ballad and a cluttered climax which deals with a robot invasion that doesn't fit the tone of what came prior.

The animation style is lived in, and feels like actual paint strokes hitting a canvas, as the animals are rendered slightly less cleanly than they would if they were just cuddly, animated beings. While there are story parallels to both "Wall-E" and "The Iron Giant," "The Wild Robot" doesn't hit either of those high-water marks, but it still manages to find its own sweet spot, even if it does come feeling preprogrammed.

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'THE WILD ROBOT'

Grade: B-

MPA rating: PG (for action/peril and thematic elements)

Running time: 1:41

How to watch: In theaters Sept. 27

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