Belgians may have bragging rights on waffles, but judging from “The Wild Life,” their animated fare needs help. This vague riff on “Robinson Crusoe” is so dull, the kids in my audience didn’t laugh until 45 minutes in — And that was at a coconut head-bonk, a gag so timeless it almost doesn’t count.
This version, from director Vincent Kesteloot (“A Turtle’s Tale 2”), is told from the point of view of the animals on Crusoe’s island, most of them saddled with a theme he or she repeats ad nauseam. Our narrator, a macaw called Mak (David Howard), dreams of other worlds beyond the tropical paradise he calls home. Rechristened Tuesday by castaway Crusoe (Yuri Lowenthal), he becomes the man’s guide to surviving the wild — and instructs his fellow beasts on how to live better thanks to technological advances like treehouses and, more perplexingly, plated meals.
A pair of villainous shipwrecked cats provides what little plot there is via a tiresome series of chases, while Crusoe himself is so generic he’s almost a nonentity. Perhaps that’s why he was written out of the title.