”Robots”, the latest 3D production by “Twentieth Century Fox”, is built on a too obvious and little original story which eventually turns out to be only and excuse to fill the screen with lots of colourful robots during almost two hours.
It’s a true shame when something like this happens. The audience is asking for more and is actually able to absorb much more content. And since this need doesn’t disappear during the movie –because the script is too simple, like it was only meant for our kid brother- we appreciate the always amazing 3D environment but don’t enjoy it as much as we should.
Still, the film offers some hilarious moments, until we bitterly find out almost all the jokes are based on the fact that the characters are living machines and start to hate them. Again, this helps us to unconsciously switch our attention to different things; like the music, for instance (which is really enjoyable, by the way, but this is beside the point).
The messy cast contains millions of unnecessary characters, each of them with a different colour, slightly different shape and seldom showing more than one sign of personality. The good guys are kind and pleasant and have many merry friends; the bad guys have no feelings and of course no friends. Inside this context the audience doesn’t get to believe in them, since neither of them seem to have powerful motivations nor even show a different facet at some point.
On the other hand, our senses are delighted by a feast of 3D graphics, credibly created and satisfactory animated (along the lines of the fast and vivacious “Ice Age”). After a while, however, so many robots on the screen at the same time become tiring and pointless, as it happened before even with the numerous armies of evil creatures in the multi-award-winner “The lord of the Rings”.
As a computer-generated film, we must say that, although the 3D effects are in general believable (except maybe that oil which doesn’t convince completely…), “Robots” is not as daring as other recent products in regard to virtual effects development. By the time it was released, “Shrek” came up with the best liquid effects; “The Incredibles”, along with many other improvements, contained the first attempt to use create human character for the whole cast. But, what is it that “Robots” has to offer as its new and revolutionary contribution?
When the script heavily arrives at the ending, we are given the oldest and most overused message of the film history: “Be yourself”. Unfortunately, we are quite fed up with the movie in question by then and feel our intelligence has been insulted in some way. I wonder if even the little kids won’t feel the same.
In short, few surprises in a film which probably shouldn’t have been made and undoubtedly deserves oblivion.
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