Robots (2005)

Directors:

Chris Wedge
Carlos Saldanha (co-director)

Writers:

Ron Mita (story) &
Jim McClain (story) ...

Release Date:

11 March 2005 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Adventure | Comedy | Family | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

You can shine no matter what you're made of.

Plot:

In a robot world, a young idealistic inventor travels to the big city to join his inspiration's company, only to find himself opposing its sinister new management.

Plot Keywords:

Robot | Television | Obsolescence | Computer Animation | Dancing

Awards:

2 wins & 13 nominations

Cast

Paula Abdul	...	Watch (voice)
Halle Berry	...	Cappy (voice)
Lucille Bliss	...	Pigeon Lady (voice)
Terry Bradshaw	...	Broken Arm Bot (voice)
Jim Broadbent	...	Madame Gasket (voice)
Mel Brooks	...	Bigweld (voice)
Amanda Bynes	...	Piper (voice)
Drew Carey	...	Crank (voice)
Jennifer Coolidge	...	Aunt Fanny (voice)
Dylan Denton	...	Youngest Rodney (voice)
Will Denton	...	Young Rodney (voice)
Marshall Efron	...	Lamppost / Toilet Bot / Bass Drum / Microphone (voice)
Damien Fahey	...	Stage Announcer (voice)
Lowell Ganz	...	Mr. Gasket (voice)
Paul Giamatti	...	Tim the Gate Guard (voice)

Also Known As:

Robots: The IMAX Experience (USA) (IMAX version)

MPAA:

Rated PG for some brief language and suggestive humor.

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Italian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS | Sonics-DDP (IMAX version)

Certification:

Mexico:A | Denmark:A | South Korea:All | Sweden:Btl | Canada:G | Taiwan:GP | Malaysia:U | Iceland:L | USA:PG (certificate #41487) | France:U | New Zealand:G | Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Brazil:Livre | Chile:TE | Czech Republic:U | Finland:K-7 | Germany:o.Al. | Ireland:PG | Netherlands:AL | Norway:A | Peru:PT | Philippines:G | Singapore:PG | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) | UK:U | Hong Kong:I

Filming Locations:

White Plains, New York, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century Fox Animation

Trivia:

After Rodney is dumped outside Bigweld Industries by the giant magnet, all the metal shavings from the slogan sign stick to his head, just like the old-time Magnetic Face toys.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Rodney uses Wonder-bot to help his father wash dishes in the kitchen at the diner, his dad has 3 dirty plates already in his "stomach dishwasher". Wonder-bot adds 6 more plates, bringing the total of dirty plates inside dad to 9. Seconds later when Wonder-bot takes the newly cleaned plates out of dad's "stomach", there are only the 6 that were added. The original three are missing.

Quotes:

Fender: My name used to be Bumper, but had to change it when we moved into the country.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "HBO First Look: Robots (#12.6)" (2005)

Soundtrack:

A BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO

wind-up toys

Robots is an incessantly banal tone poem of unmodulated hyperactivity. Set in a sci-fi milieu ripe for a satirical skewering of our own political, economic, and media culture, the filmmakers instead deliver a witless rendition of the Horatio Alger story devoid of either laughter or pathos. While it would be easy to accuse the studio of purposefully sanitizing the movie in order to make it go down better with the Whoppers with which it is being cross-promoted, it's far more likely that no one in a position of authority on this project possessed the basic abstract thinking skills necessary to propel the narrative into the sphere of literature.

Apart from its mind-numbing monotony, the movie is primarily distinguished by its narcissism, whereby our Hollywood filmmakers posit that in the world of robots, the greatest robot of all is...a television star. That it never occurs to Robots' creators that men who are machines might not need televisions (either because they *are* televisions, or because they are, rather, entertained by houseplants in the same way that we are entertained by machines) is illustrative of the incredibly lazy writing at the heart of this movie.

The animation itself is proficient and soulless. While the screen is always a hubbub of jittery activity, this is primarily to mask the fact that there is precious little dramatic *action* taking place. Instead what we have is a series of static dialog scenes decorated around the edges of the frame with wind-up contraptions to create the illusion that something is actually happening.

Robin Williams delivers a garish, ego-maniacal, scenery-chewing performance as the voice of "Fender" that challenges the notion that an animated film is created by the artists who draw it (on computer or otherwise). Perhaps rather than an "animated" film, Robots should simply be called a "rendered" one.