Review
Robots
- Director
- Carlos Saldanha
- Chris Wedge
- Year
- 2005
- Rating
- Reviewed by
- José Ruiloba a.k.a. Morris
- Review date
- Monday, March 28, 2005
Rodney Copperbottom (voice of Ewan McGregor) has always dreamt of becoming an inventor and work for the absolute genius in that regard, Bigweld (voice of Mel Brooks). He thus moves to Robot City, where he encounters a lot of hostility and finds out Bigweld has been missing and an ultra-modern robot, Ratchet (voice of Greg Kinnear) has replaced him, turning the company into a disgrace for poor, ordinary robots out there. As it happens, his mother Madame Gasket (voice of Jim Broadbent!) is behind the evil plan. But with a little help from Cappy (Halle Berry), one of their employees, and Fender (voice of Robin Williams), an eccentric down-on-his-luck robot Rodney befriends, he will try to get to the bottom of it.
I am going to start talking about this movie in respect to what I liked the most: its visuals. Oh-my-God! It’s spectacular. And beautiful. And surprising. The level of imagination going into it is insane, and the way the animators were able to bring it to life is inspiring. Every robot is carefully, and differently, constructed down to the tiniest detail. Robot City is like a geek’s wet dream. And the color palettes are vibrant and alive. In a nutshell, the creators exceeded themselves and conceived a world that is simply a joy to behold.
I mentioned before that the level of imagination is outstanding. That also goes to the logistics of creating a world of robots. The movie opens with a whole sequence of how Rodney was born. That sequence answers a lot of questions we might’ve had afterwards, and sets the bar pretty high for the rest of the movie, as it starts the movie with a bang. Because, you see, robots in this movie essentially take the place of humans. Everything is human about them except that they are, like… robots. Physical issues ensue, and the movie has a very creative and fascinating way to explain and show and joke around these various matters.
Did I say joke? Yes I did. If anything, Robots is a hilarious movie. Like many modern animated movies, it contains a lot of pretty effective pop culture references (from classic movies to a completely unexpected Britney Spears insert), but fortunately it doesn’t rely only on that. The script (by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) allows for a lot of funny stuff, especially regarding the character of Fender. One gets the impression Robin Williams improvised a lot of his dialogue, but whether he did or not, his work is mostly amusing and he feels relaxed in the part, which makes for a more natural flow of laughs at his, and his friends, expense.
The movie has another agenda. It toys around two different issues in which it tries to deliver a message: renew or stay behind, and follow your dreams. If you were thinking the movie is preachy I gotta say it is. It exploits these conceits until the very last and in pretty obvious manners. But that didn’t bother me at all.
That said, even though I’m positively gushing a lot about the movie, I do think there was something missing. I can’t really say what it is exactly, but greatness is not reached, and that’s a pity because all the elements were there. Some plots are not that well developed and some characters are left behind for no reason. And the movie does have its heart in the right place, but it just failed to reach higher.
The voice cast is uniformly great, with Mel Brooks, Robin Williams, Jim Broadbent and Jennifer Coolidge being the standouts. Then again... what a cast! Additional voices come from Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey, Paul Giamatti, Dan Hedaya, Jay Leno, Natasha Lyonne, Stanley Tucci, Dianne Wiest and many more.
“I ran all this way in Cha-Cha heels...”
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Other reviews of Robots (2005): Groucho
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