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The delightful designs of William Joyce (writer/illustrator of such popular children's books as George Shrinks and Bently & Egg) make Robots a joy to behold. The round, bouncy, and ramshackle forms of hero Rodney Copperbottom and his computer-animated friends are part of an ornate and daffy
Rube-Goldberg universe of elaborate contraptions and gleaming metallic surfaces. Rodney (voiced with a hint-of-Scottish lilt by Ewan McGregor) is a young inventor who sets off for Robot City to work for Big Weld (Mel Brooks), the supreme inventor of the mechanical world. But upon his arrival, Rodney discovers that Big Weld has disappeared, and the slick, shiny Ratchet (Greg Kinnear, As Good As It Gets) is phasing out the spare parts that lumpen robots need to function and replacing them with "upgrades"--expensive and glistening new exoskeletons. Unfortunately, from this suitable beginning, the story degenerates into a series of action sequences that make very little sense, though some are kinetic and fun (though others are only there to serve the inevitable Robots video game). Most kids will enjoy the sheer visual pleasure of the movie, but compared to the narrative richness of Pixar movies like The Incredibles and Toy Story, that pleasure is pretty short-lived. Also featuring the voices of Robin Williams, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Amanda Bynes, Jennifer Coolidge, and many, many more. --Bret Fetzer
 Fender providing assistance. |
DVD Features
Jennifer Coolidge returns as the voice of Aunt Fanny in a mildly amusing new short, "Aunt Fanny's Tour of Booty," which allows her to again be the butt of the joke. Fans of the characters will enjoy both a 17-minute discussion of the robots' creation as well as profiles of 11 of the bots, including early, almost unrecognizable conceptual sketches and brief interviews with the voice cast. The original short is fairly dull, and of the three deleted scenes, the most finished is an extended version of Rodney's initial meeting with Tim at the gate. One other is in sketch form only but does preserve another performance by Robin Williams. The kids' games are pretty good. There's a dancing robot that will perform eight routines on command or in random order. A memory game has a bit of replay value, and the build-a-bot segment takes some thought and investigation. The Xbox demo is a nifty little diversion that transforms one element (the transport-pod race) of the full-length, single-player Xbox game into a frenetic one- to four-player free-for-all.
In their commentary track, director Chris Wedge and producer-inspiration William Joyce have to remind each other to stop patting themselves on the back, but it is interesting to hear them talk about old games such as Mousetrap that played a part in developing the film. (Wedge's frequent references to a possible "director's cut" might not seem like a joke to DVD buyers who have gotten tired of DVD rereleases.) The commentary track by the Blue Sky technical team might be better, offering insights into the characters and the creation of the film without lapsing into too much techie-speak. --David Horiuchi
Stills from Robots (click for larger image)
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The World of Robots
 The Art of Robots |  Robots soundtrack |  Robots score |
 Robots for Xbox |  Robots for PS2 |  Robots for GBA |
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A lot more going on here than you think,
By Serendipity (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Robots (Full Screen Bilingual Edition) (DVD)
While not as funny as other animated movies such as Shrek, Robots has some truly funny moments to lighten what might otherwise be a rather dark film.There is plenty here for kids to enjoy, and the animation is superb, but any parent or adult animated-film-appreciator can get a lot out of it too. (See the review below for a great synopsis of the story.) Few animated movies have this many parallels to current issues and events. In Robots, the citizens of Robot City are facing pressure to upgrade or be outmoded scrap metal. Since this is how car companies, for example, work, I certainly hope the positive message here will resurface when kids grow up and bear the full brunt of marketing and advertising. That the Robots resist, becoming adept at fixing their own problems and not rely on others in positions of power, is also a much-needed message. Like Disney movies and other Hollywood animated feature films, Robots suffers from being too obvious, from forcing its messages down people's throats for fear that anything less will be overlooked or misunderstood. Being heavy-handed with morals tends to drag these movies down for an adult audience, but I still got some laughs out of it (I loved the farting scene: the street lamp outside collapses and in the morning its gone, just a chalk outline showing where it died) and the ballet-fight scene between Rodney and Fender was quite beautiful, and amusing. If anything should be taken away from this movie, it's People Power. It's the ability of people, when pushed to the limits of their endurance, to rally together and fight back for what they believe in: justice, a safe and peaceful future (think: Viet Nam). Leaders of the world beware.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good little family movie!,
By John Thomas Anderson (Stoney Creek, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Robots [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)
I would have given this movie 3-1/2 stars, but you can't do halfs, so I'll give it a four.For kids, this is an absolutely great movie. Visually, it's among the best CG animated movies out there. Everything on the screen moves, bounces and is poster bright. They've created an entire world here full of springs, hoops, wheels and just about everything else. There's always something to see. For adults, it starts out a bit on the slow side, but is made up for by snappy dialogue (especially Robin Williams) and lots of references to other movies that the kids won't even notice, but you will. For the first half of the movie, I'd have rated it about 2-1/2, but it redeems itself in the last half when it really picks up the pace and just zips along to a very, very satisfying conclusion. It also has the best song and dance finale since Shrek. So I recommend it. One final note - The BD case is marked as English DTS-HD Master audio. This is incorrect. This version which we get here in Canada is actually an international version which I presume was necessary in order to give us the french Cdn language track. Only the american BD has DTS-HD Master Audio. However, as compensation, this version not only has the standard American English DTS 5.1 track, but also a total of 20 other audio tracks! And at least half are in a full 5.1, a mix of DTS and Dolby Digital depending on the language chosen. Not only is there everything from French to German to Spanish but also Danish, Swedish and a least a couple of languages that I couldn't figure out. They even throw in full DTS 5.1 tracks of Australian English and U.K. English for good measure. No wonder they had no room for the DTS-HD Master English track! And yes, they have an equal number of subtitle tracks as well. J. A.
4.0 out of 5 stars
MY 5 YEAR OLDS FAVORITE MOVIE,
This review is from: Robots (Widescreen Bilingual Edition) (DVD)
Robots is very funny, very witty and a great family movie. My son loves this movie, we have watched it 5+ times. The characters are very age appropriate for children, there are jokes that are appealing to them and to adults. Great family movie!
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