Robots
(2005)
Voices of: Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Mel Brooks, Stanley Tucci, Dianne
Wiest
Director: Carlos Saldanha, Chris Wedge
U.S.
Opening Date: March 11, 2005
Ice Age was one of 2002’s unexpected surprises:
a crowd-pleasing computer-generated animated movie that came out of
nowhere and delighted everyone. Okay, a few snooty critics pulled up their
noses and went on about how Spirited Away
was better (which it was, but that doesn’t make Ice Age bad by any
means), but my two-year-old daughter likes this one better than Finding
Nemo – and that’s gotta count for something. Right?
So it’s (a) great that Ice Age director Chris Wedge has made
another CGI animated movie, but (b) it isn’t dedicated to that little
squirrel thingy in Ice Age that supplied most of that movie’s
laughs.
Instead, it is Robots which feature, well, some
rather cutesy-looking robots. Rather too cutesy for my taste. Come to
think of it they look as if they might be squarely aimed at the
demographic represented by my two-year-old, which isn’t a problem as such,
but damn it! we have to watch this stuff with her! (And the trailer
doesn't look particularly funny or anything either.)
So it’s with some trepidation that we await Robots
– it may have director Wedge, but it has those cutesy robots. Even worse,
it has a screenplay by the entity known as Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz,
the “creative team” behind some of the worst “feel-good” 1980s fare that
ever saw the light of a camera projector. Their credits include:
Laverne & Shirley, Mr. Saturday Night, Gung Ho, Spies
Like Us, Multiplicity, City Slickers and A League of
Their Own.
Suddenly the universe grew so much scarier . . .
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Plot Summary for Robots:
Set on a world populated entirely by robots, this is the story of a
young genius, Rodney (McGregor), who wants to make robots capable of
making the world a better place, but he finds his dream challenged by a
corporate tyrant and a master inventor, Big Weld (Brooks), while also
being seduced by a sexy corporate robot, Cappy (Berry)...
