Broke-Down Script Leaves Robots in Pieces

Rodney Copperbottom (Ewan McGregor) is destined for greatness. At least, the young inventor thinks he is, and if only he could get a chance to prove it the world would agree. That’s why he’s going to make the long trek to Robot City and get an audience with famed robot genius and legendary inventor Bigweld (Mel Brooks). For once Bigweld sees what Rodney can do, there’s just no limit the heights this young blue dreamer will climb or the number of ‘bots he’s going to be able to help.

What Rodney doesn’t know, however, is that Bigweld Industries has been taken over by the silver-tongued and chromium-plated Ratchet (Greg Kinnear), a corporate tyrant more interested in profit shares than helping the common bot. Bigweld’s gone missing, and with him out of the way nothing is going to stand in Ratchet’s way of turning the poor of Robot City into scrap for his new and improved line of robotic upgrades. Nothing, that is, save Rodney and his gaggle of newfound low-tech friends; the scatterbrained Fender (Robin Williams), the cranky Crank Casey (Drew Carey), pipsqueak Piper Pinwheeler (Amanda Bynes) and the rotund Aunt Fanny (Jennifer Coolidge). Together, with the help of sexy Bigweld Industries executive Cappy (Halle Berry), they’ll stop Ratchet and his corrosively evil mother Madame Gasket (Jim Broadbent) saving the day for other out-modes everywhere.

Welcome to Robots, the latest computer animated family adventure from the creators of 2002’s surprise smash Ice Age. It’s getting a bit redundant to say, but like so many other CG-driven animated films this is a spectacular visual achievement. Co-directors Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha have gone out of their way to make sure Robot City looks like nothing else. It is a living, breathing mechanical megalopolis, a Rube Goldberg dreamscape come to bouncy beautiful colorfully audacious life.

But so what? At this point, the visually spectacular is nothing new for a computer animated movie. Pixar, DreamWorks, Blue Sky (20th Century Fox’s CG animation studio); they all score on that front, so the fact Robots does, too, isn’t really all that interesting. What is interesting is how little effort studios like DreamWorks and Fox seem to be putting into scripts. Shrek 2 managed little of the wit of the original, getting by on the charm and charisma of its stars and upon some wonderfully silly (and borderline ingenious) sight gags. Shark Tale was worse, a mess of kid movie clichés and tired one-liners that grew old far too quickly. Even Robert Zemeckis couldn’t get it right, The Polar Express another visual marvel with a pedestrian and unfocused screenplay. (Only Pixar seems able to continually top themselves, putting as much effort into screenplays and characterizations as they do in the visuals.)

Robots is better than Shark Tale, unfortunately it’s just not better by all that much. The screenplay (co-written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, Multiplicity, City Slickers) is as boringly obvious and traditional as they come, the plot here about as mind-numbingly banal as any of the other rote coming of age tales I can recall. Sure, little kids will be entertained, but with visuals as splendid as these why shouldn’t they be? It’s the adults whom will find Robots a chore; so much so many parents might as well bring along a pillow and a blanket and take a brisk 90-minute nap.

Where Wedge and company succeed, however, is in casting. All of the vocal actors do exemplary work, investing depth and passion into their portrayals the script doesn’t come close to hinting at. You have to be impressed, and it’s nice watching Williams do his berserkish gonzo thing as the freewheeling (and borderline insane) Fender. But whereas his antics helped propel his last voiceover job in Aladdin forward, there’s almost no reason for exist here, the plot mechanics of Robots not needing him to get from Point A to Point B.  Still, he’s a hoot, and McGregor and company play off his antics beautifully.

But who am I kidding? I’m tired of kids films intent on pushing boundaries visually only to leave their screenplays as a non-important afterthought, masking problems with bouncy pop songs and a plethora of big-time celebrities in cameo roles. Maybe I’m turning into a fuddy-duddy (but as I’m not yet 30 I hope not), but I’m just not going to keep giving these pics a pass just because the little ones chortle along like they’re supposed to. It’s the script, stupid, and until the majority of animation filmmakers remember it I’m done being nice.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)