March 11, 2005 | Very early in Robots, the latest animated marvel from the makers of Ice Age, the extraordinary starts to seem perfectly ordinary. And, mind you, I mean that as a compliment.
Director Chris Wedge and his army of artist-technicians (along with co-director Carlos Saldanha) do such a wondrous job of creating and sustaining the illusion of a matter-of-factly amazing world populated with meticulously detailed mechanical creatures — complete with chipped paint, unsightly dents, and other telltale signs of wear and tear — that it’s astonishingly easy to quickly accept everything on screen as, if not reality, then a persuasive facsimile thereof.
But wait, there’s more: Just as The Incredibles struck many of us as a rousingly exciting action-comedy that just happened to be an animated feature, Robots is a three-dimensional, computer-generated cartoon that often achieves the dramatic and emotional impact of the very best live-action sci-fi adventures. (Mind you, that’s 3-D in the sense of appearing to have depth, not in the sense of, well, needing those clunky glasses.) Granted, the script contains as many second-hand parts as some of its title characters. But the movie as a whole inspires more than enough wonder to qualify as spectacle, and generates enough more than enough laughter to amuse audiences of all ages. It’s a 3-D CG experience that’s gee-whiz, my-oh-my exhilarating.
In the world according to Robots, immense cityscapes appear co-designed by Fritz Lang and Rube Goldberg, incorporating everything from art deco to futurism, ’30s kitchen appliances to ’50s auto tailfins. Multitudes of mechanicals are balkanized according to class, divisions are maintained in multi-level urban environments, and public-transportation systems resemble super-sized pinball machines.
Rodney Copperbottom (voiced by Ewan McGregor), a callow young ’bot from the boondocks of Rivet Town, journeys to vast metropolis of Robot City to find work as an inventor at Bigweld Industries. Unfortunately, Rodney arrives in Robot City just as Ratchet (Greg Kinnear), a corporate mecha-shark, replaces beloved old Bigweld (Mel Brooks) as company chief.
To maximize profits, Ratchet institutes a program to cease manufacturing replacement parts, thereby making it easier to sell overpriced upgrade bodies to worn-out robots. (The new Bigweld ad slogan: “Why be you when you can be new?”) Unfortunately, this means aging ’bots who can’t afford upgrades – like Rodney’s beloved father, Herb Copperbottom (Stanley Tucci), a dishwasher (yes, a real dishwasher) back in Rivet Town — ultimately will be consigned to scrap heaps. But that’s OK with Ratchet: His malevolent old mother, Madame Gasket (Jim Broadbent), runs an underground “chop shop” where obsolete and/or unrepairable robots are ripped apart and melted down.
Naturally, the ingenuous and unassuming Rodney winds up leading a revolution against Ratchet’s chicanery. In this, he receives help from such unlikely allies as Cappy (Halle Berry), a sleek yet scrappy Bigweld executive who rebuffs Ratchet’s unwanted advances; Piper (Amanda Bynes), a peppy girl-bot with pigtails shaped like shower heads; Fender (Robin Williams), Piper’s older brother, a hyperkinetic hustler who’s constantly scrounging to find replacement parts for himself and others; and silent Diesel, whose search for a voice box cues a forceful cameo voicing by James Earl Jones.
It’s a pity the narrative that drives the colorful characters through this eye-popping wonderland is something short of piping-hot fresh. Even pre-schoolers in the audience may experience a distracting sense of déjà vu as familiar plot conflicts and stock characterizations loom large in Wedge’s brave new world. Still, the screenplay is sufficiently serviceable as an excuse to leap from one visually dazzling scene to the next. And the vocal performances are first-rate across the board, from McGregor’s engaging earnestness as Rodney (whose head resembles a cross between an outboard motor and a faux-retro toaster) to Brooks’ robust bombast as the roly-poly Bigweld. And even though much of Williams’ shtick sounds recycled from his vocals for FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Disney’s “Aladdin” franchise, he’s undeniably delightful as he cuts loose with riffs on Japanese anime, pop-tart music videos and, best of all, the glorious Singin’ in the Rain.
At its frequent best – Robots rocks.
