Roz is surrounded by woodland creatures in “The Wild Robot,” directed by Chris Sanders. Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Animation

There’s a subset of family movies that’s obsessed with humanoid technology – robots, personal helpers and the like – and that is determined to work out the conflicted feelings we human beings have toward them. “The Iron Giant” (1999), “Robots” (2005), “WALL-E” (2008), “Ron’s Gone Wrong” (2021) – the list goes on, and why not? Our children will be living in a world where telling artificial intelligence from the real thing may be a survival skill, so why not prime the pump and tiny minds early?

What makes matters even more interesting is that for every “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” (2021) – technology is out to kill us, ha ha – there’s a movie like the new DreamWorks Animation production “The Wild Robot,” which says that a child’s best friend is his metallic mother. Here’s your popcorn, kids – discuss.

Adapted by writer-director Chris Sanders (“Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon”) from Maine author and illustrator Peter Brown’s 2016 bestselling children’s book, the film is just fine for the little ones and engaging for the grown-ups, if not the groundbreaking work of family animation that early reports have made it out to be. There are almost no actual humans to be seen, just a collision of critters and high-tech cyborgs, the latter in the form of a Rozzum domestic servant automaton, Unit #7134, that washes ashore on an unpeopled island somewhere in Northern Europe after a storm at sea.

There’s a lot of comedy and more than a little food for thought watching the robot power up and approach every mammal, bird and bug offering help and asking for instructions in the dulcet tones of Lupita Nyong’o. Bonus for history nerds: The brand name Rozzum is presumably a tip of the hat to the 1920 play that introduced the word “robot” to the English language, Karel Capek’s “R.U.R.,” an acronym for “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” There will not be a quiz.

In any event, the robot soon renames “herself” Roz and, after scaring half the woodland silly and adapting to her environment in a long, funny, harum-scarum action scene, settles down to befriend a cynical fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal) and raise a runt of a barnacle goose (after accidentally squashing his parents, but never mind, never mind).

Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) and Brightbill (Kit Connor) in “The Wild Robot.” Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Animation

The runt evolves from an adorable gosling to an ungainly teenager named Brightbill (Kit Connor), and much is made by Fink and the other island animals of the fact that runts aren’t meant to survive at all. Further alienating Brightbill from his fellow geese (a mean-girl goose voiced by Stephanie Hsu, a wise elder voiced by Bill Nighy) is his habit of talking like a robot’s owner’s manual. Will he be able to join the annual migration south before winter comes? Will Roz be able to come to terms with this new, unprogrammed emotion she feels called maternal love?

Only a child would call this suspense, and maybe not even a child weaned on a steady diet of Hollywood family films. Sanders is one of the animation business’s artistic elders, so one wants to cut “The Wild Robot” slack, but the movie lacks the manic weirdness of “Lilo & Stitch” or the high-flying charm of “How to Train Your Dragon.” Plus the flat, geometric rendering of the characters that is DreamWorks’ house style has always felt too close to CAD modeling software for my tastes – it’s an aesthetic choice, but one that seems a step short of final. (The film’s backgrounds are painterly and quite beautiful, though.)

“The Wild Robot” has reduced a lot of respectable early reviewers to happy tears, and chances are that you and your children will feel the same. So go already! And allow me to be the Scrooge who says machines can always only mimic emotion and never, ever feel it, and a movie that tells you otherwise is selling you something. The next iteration of Siri? The Matrix? “The Wild Robot 2”? I don’t know, but something.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.