Although Robots has great animation, wonderful visual invention, and a few clever jokes, it has no compelling characters or story to hold them together.
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When I first saw "Robots" it was in a theater, and I had the choice between it and "The Ring 2." I should have chosen "The Ring 2."
"Robots" will probably fascinate some kids with its color, its noise, and its constant motion. As an adult, however, I found the movie a joy to look at but more than a little tedious to sit through, despite the presence of Robin Williams as a primary voice. The computer animation in this 2005 production (from the same team that gave us "Ice Age") is glorious, and I found it captivating to watch for about ten minutes. Then my fascination with the detail and spectacle of the scenery and the robot designs wore off, leaving nothing but the film's weak plot and characters to kick in.
I have to admit, this was the first time I ever fell asleep in a theater. I must have been out for a good ten or fifteen minutes, judging by what I see I missed on the DVD. It was during the ballroom scene, and zap. I may have just been tired, but apparently I wasn't the only one who was less than enthralled by the movie. Many of the preschoolers in the audience with me were talking, screaming, and kicking the chairs, I assume because they were so uninterested. Two kids had to be escorted from the auditorium, presumably by their mother, never to return. Only one person was laughing at the antics on screen, an older lady in front of me who cackled insanely at every line and action.
As far as I'm concerned, as beautiful as it to look at, "Robots" lacks the warmth of the "Toy Story" movies, the hipness of the "Shrek" films, the heart of "Monsters, Inc.," and the sheer fun and excitement of "The Incredibles." Not even the talented cast of voices in "Robots" do much to instill any life into a motion picture that is mainly show and little else. With the exceptions of Robin Williams and Mel Brooks, I found most of the famous voices bland and hard to differentiate from one another. For me the result was a film with little to recommend it beyond a multitude of chases, a plethora of fights, a lot of running around, a few good one-liners aimed primarily at adults, and, of course, a stunning array of visuals. Not even the music helps. I usually sit through a movie's closing credits at the theater, but the loud pop stuff playing at the end of this one (a movie character says it's "a fusion of jazz and funk called junk") chased me off early.
As the title suggests, the movie is about robots. All the creatures in the movie are robots, mechanical devices that talk and act like humans. It's a good gimmick, much like the world of monsters in "Monsters, Inc.," except that "Monsters, Inc." was about creatures with genuine human emotions. "Robots" is about walking, talking gadgets and about thinking up clever robot gags for them to perform. Or not-so-clever robot gags, like an extended flatulence scene designed to cash in on Hollywood's incessantly juvenile interest in bodily functions.
Anyway, Ewan McGregor is the star voice behind the film's lead character, Rodney Copperbottom, and right away we have a problem. McGregor is Scottish, but for reasons unknown he does an American accent. As a result, he comes off unrecognizable as Ewan McGregor; he could be any nondescript American actor. What's the point of using a big name voice that we can't recognize? Hmmm.
Things begin at Gunk's Greasy Spoon Cafe in Rivet Town, where Herb Copperbottom discovers he's about to become a father. The baby has just been delivered in pieces, and he and his wife have to put it together. Jokes about "making a baby" follow. In fact, most of the cutest jokes come in the movie's first few minutes. After that, the gags are mostly repetitious or redundant.
Herb (voiced by Stanley Tucci) is a dishwasher, and he wants his new kid to be something more. So before long, Rodney heads out to Robot City to seek his fortune as an inventor. In the big city, he meets a fast-talking con artist, Fender (Robin Williams), who looks like an old gasoline pump; a once big-shot industrialist, Bigweld (Mel Brooks); a romantic interest, Cappy (Halle Berry); a big-bottomed boardinghouse keeper, Aunt Fanny (Jennifer Coolidge); and some dastardly villains, the slick and polished Rachet (Greg Kinnear) and his evil mother, Madame Gasket (Jim Broadbent).
The animation while often spectacular is just as often cluttered, packed with more than the eye can take in. Its style is reminiscent of a more-complicated version of the old Disney "Silly Symphonies" of the thirties, and the various robots all seem inspired by machines of the early-to-mid twentieth century. The voices, though, are purely modern, and one method of whiling away the time is trying to identify who's playing whom. I'll give you a few hints: Listen not only for the people I've already mentioned, but for Dianne Wiest, Amanda Bynes, Paul Giamotti, Natasha Lyonne, James Earl Jones (OK, that one will be easy), Paula Abdul, Drew Carey, Dan Hedaya, Marshall Efron, Jay Leno, Harland Williams, and more. The trouble is that most of these otherwise well-known voices are indistinguishable from one another in the picture without well-known faces to go with them. Oh, well....
The movie borrows from (I'll be kind, "references") any number of other films, things like "Alice in Wonderland," "The Wizard of Oz," "Braveheart," "Star Wars," "2001," "Superman," "Monsters, Inc.," and about a dozen others, even Wagner's "Die Walkure." This referencing business seems to be a favorite pastime in Hollywood anymore, so the gimmick is in itself a hip borrowing, for good or for bad.
A few bits stand out: Robin Williams's nonstop patter, although even he can't be expected to save the whole show; a Rube Goldberg-like transportation system that is fascinating to follow; a ballet on marbles scene and a "Singin' in the Oil" segment that are cute. And Mel Brooks's voice is always pleasant to listen to, especially when it sounds exactly like Mel Brooks (except when it sounds like Al Pacino, and then it's still fun).
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[release]16352[/release]