If it only had a heart

Noel Vera

Easily the best portions of "Robots" is the detailed world the
filmmakers make, of a completely mechanized city gone partly to seed-
-on one side "upgraded" automatons, all shiny chrome and sleek
aerodynamic lines; on the other rust-stained appliances, full of
second-hand parts that vaguely resemble a vision of the future
cobbled together by some '50s Imagineer.

You can understand the sentiment--they want to pit brand-new models
full of integrated parts and built-in obsolescence with gadgets from
an older period, an older philosophy, where the word 'repair' didn't
have such a cheap air about it, and shops that fixed things (as
opposed to electronic appliance stores that, should anything go
wrong, refer you to the manufacturer's warranty) actually tinkered
around with your appliance, cleaning it up and adding little
improvements along the way. Somewhere on the way to the future the
philosophy towards machines changed, and now it's not just expected
but actually cheaper to just buy a new model when something--a DVD
player, a personal computer, even a new car--breaks down.

I think it's a terrific idea for a story, with all the potential
drama and pathos that can be found in inanimate objects--think of
Carlo Collodi's (pen name of Carlo Lorenzini) fairy
tale "Pinocchio," the dark original on which Disney based his
(bowdlerized but still powerful) animated masterpiece; think, if you
wish for a more recent example, of Thomas Disch's "The Brave Little
Toaster," where a group of everyday appliances journey from a
country house to the big city, in search for their missing owner. We
tend to anthropomorphize objects, particularly objects we have a
fond attachment to, or feel hostile against, or even fear (see
Steven Spielberg's "Duel," about a car menaced by a malignant truck--
arguably his best work ever); many of these stories are expressions
of our affection or exasperation with our mechanical kin.

Too bad that with such potential in their premise, directors Chris
Wedge and Carlos Saldanha confine themselves to making tinny jokes
about oversized behinds and undersized coffee pots, wasting precious
running time on film references ("2001" has a quick homage, and for
some reason they even bother to allude to George Lucas' clunky mega-
lemon, "Attack of the Clones") and roller-coaster rides that would
probably look awesome on the IMAX screen (the ultimate destination
for amusement-park type movies like these). The movie is incredibly
busy, so busy that the filmmakers seem to have forgotten a few
simple ingredients--namely, witty dialogue and characters that
actually gain your sympathy.

Ewan McGregor plays the hero, Rodney Copperbottom, with all the
distinction of a Black & Decker vacuum cleaner; Greg Kinnear, who
essays the villainous Ratchet, tries for funny and almost succeeds,
once or twice, but the script never really lets him cut loose; Jim
Broadbent as Madam Gasket, Ratchet's monstrous mother, growls
impressively, but otherwise delivers a minimum number of nasty
lines; Robin Williams, presumably hoping to repeat his success in
Disney's "Aladdin," skitters on the thin divide between funny and
annoying (skidding more often towards annoying than not) with his
portrayal of Fender, Rodney's comic sidekick; Halle Berry's name can
be found in the opening credits, but for the life of me, I can't
distinguish her voice from the general blandness (she'd make the
perfect computer voice for a remake of "2001"). The rest of the
cast, a terrific gallery of character actors from Paul Giamatti to
Dan Hedaya to Stanley Tucci to Dianne Wiest, are, for all intents
and purposes, largely relegated to the junk heap (well, Wiest as the
awesomely proportioned Aunt Fanny does do one funny fart joke).

Wedge and Saldanha and writers Jim McClain and John Mita had
previously done "Ice Age," another animated feature that felt rather
cool to the touch, more a series of jokes and busy slapstick than
anything actually interesting (though they did have a running gag--a
prehistoric squirrel with a mania for a prehistoric acorn--that had
me rooting for the little critter). If this picture has
more "heart," that would probably be due to Lowell Ganz and Babaloo
Mandel, director Ron Howard's favorite scriptwriters, and the people
responsible for the sticky-sweet "Parenthood," among others. Ganz
and Mandel between them have written about fifteen screenplays, and
produced perhaps one decent picture-- "Splash"--back when Howard was
still capable of balancing sentiment with a smart sense of humor;
nowadays, their idea of moving would be to deliver the equivalent of
industrial-strength laxative to their audiences ("Forget Paris;" "A
League of Their Own"). Their participation in this particular
production is pointedly unwelcome.

As one critic put it, when it comes to animation there's Pixar, the
Japanese, and the rest. Much as I'm not a fan of Pixar, I will admit
that they do know how to tell a story--to take you up with a zippy
start, introduce you to characters that appeal to and interest you,
then go on to predicaments that are part funny, part dramatic, with
just a whisper of a moral for some depth.

The Japanese, however, play a far more sophisticated game--
Shinichiro Watanabe with his fatalistic, beyond-cool "Cowboy Bebop,"
focusing on a group of glamorous losers and their pathetic notions
of what constitutes living; Mamoru Oshii with his "Ghost in the
Shell" and "Innocence," delving into philosophical questions on the
nature of intelligence; Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, with films
like "Grave of the Fireflies" and "Princess Mononoke" depicting,
respectively, the suffering of children in wartime and the struggle
between nature and industrialization--and that's just skimming the
surface. Hollywood, in this case 20th Century Fox's animation shop
Blue Sky Studios, for all its cutting-edge 3-D computer technology
seems mired in the Pleistocenic mindset that animation is strictly
for kids, and should avoid uncomfortable or incomprehensible topics
like fatalism, artificial intelligence, industrialization, and war,
and the kind of storytelling that they inspire. Rather insulting
assumption to make, when you think on it, about us and our kids.

Robin Williams, whose manic humor has saved many a doubtful picture
but who seems to strangely lack either mania or humor to save this
one has the definitive word on the subject when he says "it's a new
thing, a mix of jazz and funk--call it junk."

(First published 3/18/05)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)