Robots
We all knew Robots was going to look amazing, but the terror you may understandably feel after being betrayed again and again by the non-Pixar companies is a legitimate terror. The ads push the vocal talent over the story and there’s the very real risk of a Robin-Williams-run-amok factor. In other words, we all worried it would be like Shark Tale.
Rest easy, Gentle Readers! Robots does not at all suffer from Shrek syndrome. Instead, it presents us with a nice simple tale (generic framework #1172-B: Hold tight to your dreams and stay true to yourself) with a dazzling visual world, and sweet, universal humor.
I’m not getting ahead of myself but what makes a classic? Firstly, a good story. It must endure beyond the moment in time it appears, and if you take out a major element of its success, it should still work. Case in point: Shark Tale. If it weren’t for the likableness of Will Smith or the pop culture references, it wouldn’t have nearly as many laughs. If you set it to squiggly drawings, it loses its punch. Shrek: No jokes that anyone will laugh at once the actors are dead except, notably, the ones referring to old children’s stories (The Muffin Man!). We think Puss is funny because we imagine testosteroni Antonio Banderas, not because the cat does anything actually funny. If you’re not going, “ooh it’s John Cleese!” you wouldn’t pay half as much attention. Robots: All-star talent that doesn’t milk its talent for its real-life persona, and except for Williams, none of the voices are very obvious. Mel Brooks is close, but he’s not playing Mel Brooks, we see only the character of Mr. Bigweld.
Williams has his manic delivery, but he’s definitely reined in. He’s using his vocal talent for good again, like in the old days. The best voices you have to figure out, and they are real actors, not poster-dollars: Paul Giamatti, Jim Broadbent, Greg Kinnear. Actors performing beautifully in service to the story above all, not just in cartoon drag.
What’s also super about Robots is its aesthetic, both visual and moral. The look is vintage Tomorrowland, the past’s vision of what the glorious technological future will hold, including broad deco sweeps and smooth Frigidaire and Edsel piping. It’s not scary, modern, and sterile, it’s warm and friendly and upbeat, the 1953 World’s Fair in dazzling CGI 3-D. The moral aesthetic is even better, also avoiding modern sterility and impersonality. Robots pushes the old-fashioned brand of self-determinism before the hypercapitalists turned that into selfish carelessness and conformity. Evil here is represented by mandatory consumerism and waste, uniformity, oligarchy, and no heart or inspiration at all. Who doesn’t feel the world is too much like a mall these days? In the big city, it’s 100 times more so for everything being a machine.
These baddies don’t find a need a fill it, they create demand by engineering need, reducing choice and taste and personality. While it’s slightly ironic than an industry built on the crazed hypertrophic obsoletion of its hardware such as the computer biz - and a studio built on the backs of greedy bastards (Warner Brothers) - that this film should still make such a sincere plea to the very youth they are guilty of corrupting. Hey, at least they are trying.
If nothing else, it’s got a good message parents can feel good about exposing their kids to and plenty of adult-level humor to keep them interested as well. In our opening weekend matinee, for example, the young’uns were screeching in simplistic delight at a rapid-fire series of armpit fart jokes (funny when there is no flesh), capped with a massive actual fart joke. The payoff, however, to this raspberry rampage is a joke just for the grownups. It made the whole lead-up totally worth it. In total, I counted only ten butt or fart jokes, which is amazing in 2005.
Unlike certain Dreamworks blockbuster franchises I would never dream of mentioning, Robots does not devolve into an embarrassing pop culture gag, modern-day cinema’s answer to the song fade (you know, when they can’t write an ending). What bothers me most about this trend is that the gag dies for the uninitiated if you don’t watch the latest hot comedy or listen to that oversexualized teenager’s song. If a gag works on its own but is made funnier by referencing the ephemera of today, great. I should point out that I am a big fan of parody, but it is a separate form altogether. Truly great parodies work without the source material: High Anxiety was even funnier when I finally saw Vertigo.
But I digress. What I am saying is that Robots works, as a story and as a meaningful way to instill good values in your child without getting bored or mired in any separation of church and state arguments, and it’s fun for all ages. And, did I mention, truly beautiful, gorgeous, with shiny and distressed metals, great shapes and sense of depth. Even the weird Alice in Wonderland moment is very cool to look at; I even wondered how they did it.
I was surprised, I was pleased, and I hope you appreciate it as much as I did. Huge Pixar fan that I am, I’d rather have decent competition out there for the medium of computer animation than the pandering embarrassment of other dreck.
MPAA Rating PG
Release date 3/11/05
Time in minutes 90
Director Chris Wedge
Studio 20th Century Fox
