Anybody else see this film yet? I was unsure if it would be any good, but it was (to me) the first non-Pixar CGI film that could hold its own against Pixar’s output.
I was unsure if having so much star power in one film would hurt it, but the actors they picked fit the characters well. The stars with noticable voices (Halle Berry, Robin Williams, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey)…you know who it is, but the voices fit the characters well.
The film has a real sense of whimsy. There are three big action sequences, and a fun finale. Especially fun are the Robot City morning communte and the domino set-up.
I want to be Mr. Bigweld. For some reason, he reminds me of Walt Disney: He’s the founder and head of a big company, he’s friendly, he encourages people to have whimsical ideas, he’s the host of his own TV show…I wonder if the writers of the film (some of whom actually worked on '70s sitcoms) had the current Disney woes in mind when they wrote the film?
There is nothing like watching a film in a theater. The kids in the audience loved it, retelling their favorite moments of “the red guy’s” antics, and planning to buy the film when it comes out on DVD. Biggest laughs from the audience I saw the film at:
-Ice Age 2: The Thaw trailer. I still think the Scrat could have been the next Bugs Bunny if shorts-before-the-feature still existed.
-Armpit-fart-off scene.
-Fender’s Britney Spears dance (my personal favorite).
Speaking of dancing, an unusual site from TCF’s promo department showing they’ve got a sense of humor: Who’s the better dancer: Fender or Napoleon Dynamite?
I didn’t even realize the Scrat thing was a trailer until you mentioned it.
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown is scheduled for 2006.
I thought Robots was flat. Not unlike Ice Age (though I’ll see anything with a mammoth in it…it’s personal). The story seemed secondary to the visuals and the performers.
Stephen Hunter, in The Washington Post, wrote that if any of the CGI animation houses was going to knock off Pixar it would be Chris Wedge’s team but that this wasn’t it. They’ve got to work on having better stories to go with the technical brilliance. That’s where they’ll really hit the bigs.
And Blue Sky’s post-Meltdown project slated for 2008 sounds interesting too. Audrey Geisel was horrified by The Cat in the Hat and decided from then on she would only allow filmmakers to use her husband’s characters in animation. Wedge’s team will tackle that with an adaptation of Horton Hears A Who!
I just saw this movie with my 4 yr old. We both enjoyed it.
Question: in the trailer there’s a scene where the Halle Berry robot kicks the Greg Kinnear robot. I must have spaced out or something, because I don’t recall seeing the scene in the movie? Was it cut or did I blink and miss it?
My SO just took our son to see it. She gave it mixed reviews – quite a lot of slapstick, some pretty low humor (robots can fart!) that had the 6-year-olds in stitches, but not a lot of meat to the story. She puts it on the same level as Shark Tale for quality/originality, and not in the same class as Shrek, Incredibles, or Finding Nemo.
I was a little disappointed in this film. I would say that it’s just a kid’s film that works for kiddies but not grown-ups, except that there were so many abortive attempts to get laughs that the kiddies wouldn’t understand (“The fun part is making the baby”). The fart and big butt jokes probably work for the intended audience, but left me cold.
What disappointed me the most were the number of good ideas that somehow got abandoned partway. There was an attempted swipe at the idea of planned obsolescence that, while incongruous in a children’s movie, might have been interesting, but was lost somewhere. Ditto the more conventional “Love yourself for who you are, not what the marketers tell you should be” storyline. Somehow “old-fashioned values” got brought up, but dropped again. I haven’t decided whether I like or loathe how funk, breakdancing, and other anachronisms crept into a fictional world clearly based on the fifties. (I’m leaning toward liking the fact the film mixed things up, but haven’t decided). Did I blink and miss the part where they explained that the dish-washing father really wanted to be a musician? That seemed to come out of left field.
Looked terrific, but not enough of a coherent or interesting story to hold my attention.
I thought it was pretty good, but I have a strong affinity for robots and I knew I was going to love it as soon as I saw the first poster quite awhile ago.
To give you an idea of my perspective, I loved Shrek, hated Shrek 2, thought Finding Nemo was bland but watchable, and I haven’t seen The Incredibles yet but I expect to like it.
This did a lot to hurt the movie for me. The rap songs and Britney Spears dance brought it down from a flawless, wonderful movie that I love to a movie that I thought was “pretty good”.
You blinked. It was at the station before Rodney left for Robot City, IIRC.
I found it hard to care about the characters, but the Lets beat the bad guys action sequence was riveting (heh). I was worried about a transvestite backlash; a scene where a robot loses his bottom part and grabs a bottom part which is female and says “So wrong”. I figured a big protest of phobia and bigotedness in these oh so p.c days.
I would see it again, though.
When the son was leaving at the train station and the mother was trying to stop him from leaving, the father bought the ticket for the son and explained how important it was to follow your dream. He explained how his original dream was to be a musician, but because of his father got retrofitted for dishwashing.
Or something like that.
I saw it in IMAX! Doesn’t improve the storyline, but the visuals are even more stunning. Just dissapointed that they didn’t make the IMAX version in 3-D, as the Polar Express people did. The movie is all computer generated anyway, so it’s no big deal to add in the 3-D software.
[QUOTE=Selkie]
I haven’t decided whether I like or loathe how funk, breakdancing, and other anachronisms crept into a fictional world clearly based on the fifties.QUOTE]
There were no anachronisms. Like you said, it was a fictional world. Some of the designs may have looked “fifties” to you, but they never established a time periold, so there’s no reason to deem any of the music in the film anachronistic. In fact, that was one of the things I liked about the movie - that they were able to successfully ease popular music into a fantasy world. Most of the time when they put existing music in a animated film, it seems like a forced attempt to add hipness and attract teens (like with Shrek). But, when that dancing robot at the train station started dancing to that hip-hop song (I don’t know the name), I was like “well, why not?”.
And BTW, I loved it. I’d have paid the 7.00 (I went to a matinee) just to see a still image of Mama Gasket. I’d rather have the DVD of this than Incredibles. Not that this was a better movie overall than Incredibles, but I like bright colors, clever sequences, and rapid-fire jokes in an animated movie more than action/drama.
He had the voice of Mickey Mouse. (most of the time) This is where I picked up the strong Disney vibe as well.
I saw the film on Friday and on Sunday I was sitting around and I was thinking, “I just saw a movie with a scene like that, what was it?” and then after about 5 minutes I remember that it was Robots. The movie is fun but it sure doesn’t stick with you. (other people are forgetting scenes too)