Robots

Robots is a great film for what it is--one of those Toy Story, Ice Age, Finding Nemo type movies that will make you laugh and in the end walk away saying, "that was a cute movie."

I would definitely classify Robots as being among one of the better computer-animated movies, with a beautifuly constructed world featuring funky designs in the architecture as well as in each character. The story is, once again, cute, with an ultimate message that beats itself over your head. This makes sense considering that it's geared toward kids.

Rodney Copperbottom (voiced by Ewan McGregor) grows up as the lone son of a wholesome robot couple. His dad encourages him to follow his dream of being an inventor, so off Rodney scoots to Robot City, where he attemps to meet Big Weld (Mel Brooks). Big Weld owns a company that sells robot parts and upgrades, and his commercials feature him exclaiming to the world that, "you can shine no matter who you are," or something like that. I don't remember. So when Rodney arrives in Robot City, after a neat sequence with him and Fender (Robin Williams) on a robot public transportation unit, he discovers that Big Weld has been ousted and Ratchet (Gary Kinnear) is now in charge of Big Weld Industries. Ratchet is the bad guy, and he's all about making money and only selling upgrades instead of replacement parts, eventually rendering older, poorer 'bots obsolete--which translates to the chop shop. He changes the company's motto to, "Why be you when you can be new?"

The plot develops very rapidly throughout the whole film, and seems completely to-the-point in some cases. The humor is also very upbeat, somewhat silly and yet clever. While a lot of people have taken to complaining about Robin Williams of late, I found his character to be extremely entertaining as opposed to in your face. Perhaps, as has been suggested by critics, he did use a lot of his jokes from his stand-up days, but, well I guess I'm not old enough to remember his stand-up days so it was all new to me.

Anyway, to sum up, this movie is cute, funny, and very lively. I walked into it knowing that at some point, a robot would actually do the robot dance, and while I wasn't disappointed in my prediction, I was surprised that it actually made me laugh.