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FILM REVIEW – "ROBOTS"
Directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha
With voices of Ewan McGregor, Robin Williams, Mel Brooks and Halle Berry
Entertainment
Art
By NED O’REILLY
Photos courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Blue Sky’s new "Robots" is no "Citizen Kane;" in fact, the plot is very familiar: young idealist (Ewan McGregor voicing Rodney Copperbottom) goes to the big city to sell his invention, discovers cynicism and disillusionment, falls in with the downtrodden, but defeats the evil big business types in the end. The twist is that all of these characters are robots and they live in an arcade game world – not a video game, but more like an elaborate pinball game. Indeed the visual effects of the film are busy, colorful, inventive, and fun throughout, the characters are zany enough (especially Robin Williams’ Fender and a refreshingly benevolent Mel Brooks as Bigweld) and one-liners abound. Also, the concept of upgrading – replacing one’s own mechanical parts as though they’re clothing – feels fresh and helps drive the story.
It used to be that you’d see an animated movie and not recognize any of the voices. After the success of the 2 Toy Storys, the 2 Shreks and last year’s Shark Tale, producers of animated films now routinely seek a whole laundry list of stars. But "Robots" has an astoundingly pedigreed cast, including Oscar winners Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Dianne Wiest, Mel Brooks, and Robin Williams, and Oscar noms Greg Kinnear and James Earl Jones, (plus Oscar-nominated script writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel). Other Hollywood stalwarts lending their voices are Ewan McGregor, Paul Giamatti, Stanley Tucci, Jennifer Coolidge, Natasha Lyonne, and Dan Hedaya, and then there are the TV bigwigs: Drew Carey, Jay Leno, Al Roker, Amanda Bynes, and Terry Bradshaw.
Another tack in fantasy-oriented pictures (put to extreme use in "Shark Tale") is to have references everywhere. TV show and commercial gags show up on billboards and in the grafitti of Robot City, tributes appear to films as varied as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The Wizard of Oz," and TV reminders surface of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and even Mister Rogers’ Land of Make Believe. The level of humor is decidedly sophomoric (an extended fart sequence got our audience going), but there’s little in it that will go over the heads of little kids, nor is there anything inappropriate for them (depending perhaps on your feelings about fart jokes).
With all the celebs on hand, it’s actually a fun challenge to figure out who’s voicing whom. Blink and you might miss Jay Leno, Drew Carey had me fooled as Crank, Jim Broadbent’s character Madame Gasket is female, and Paul Giamatti uses a squeaky voice for the wisecracking jack-in-the-box gate guard Tim. The film is also being released in an IMAX version and the long ride across town taken by Fender and Rodney as well as a similar one taken by Rodney and Bigweld are likely worth the steeper admission to those special theaters. |
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