March 11, 2005 |<\/strong>\u00a0Very early in\u00a0Robots<\/em>, the latest animated marvel from the makers of\u00a0Ice Age<\/em>, the extraordinary starts to seem perfectly ordinary. And, mind you, I mean that as a compliment.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019s astonishingly easy to quickly accept everything on screen as, if not reality, then a persuasive facsimile thereof.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But wait, there\u2019s more: Just as\u00a0The Incredibles<\/em>\u00a0struck many of us as a rousingly exciting action-comedy that just happened to be an animated feature,\u00a0Robots<\/em>\u00a0is 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\u2019s 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\u2019s a 3-D CG experience that\u2019s gee-whiz, my-oh-my exhilarating.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In the world according to\u00a0Robots<\/em>, immense cityscapes appear co-designed by Fritz Lang and Rube Goldberg, incorporating everything from art deco to futurism, \u201930s kitchen appliances to \u201950s 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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Rodney Copperbottom (voiced by Ewan McGregor), a callow young \u2019bot from the boondocks of Rivet Town, journeys to vast metropolis of\u00a0 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,\u00a0 replaces beloved old Bigweld (Mel Brooks) as company chief.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To maximize profits, Ratchet institutes a program to cease manufacturing replacement parts, thereby making it easier to sell\u00a0 overpriced upgrade bodies to worn-out robots. (The new Bigweld ad slogan: \u201cWhy be you when you can be new?\u201d) Unfortunately, this means aging \u2019bots who can\u2019t afford upgrades \u2013 like Rodney\u2019s beloved father, Herb Copperbottom (Stanley Tucci), a dishwasher (yes, a\u00a0real\u00a0<\/em>dishwasher) back in Rivet Town —\u00a0 ultimately will be consigned to scrap heaps. But that\u2019s OK with Ratchet: His malevolent old mother, Madame Gasket (Jim Broadbent), runs an underground \u201cchop shop\u201d where obsolete and\/or unrepairable robots are ripped apart and melted down.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Naturally, the ingenuous and unassuming Rodney winds up leading a revolution against Ratchet\u2019s chicanery. In this, he receives help from such unlikely allies as Cappy (Halle Berry), a sleek yet scrappy Bigweld executive who rebuffs Ratchet\u2019s unwanted advances; Piper (Amanda Bynes), a peppy girl-bot with pigtails shaped like shower heads; Fender (Robin Williams), Piper\u2019s older brother, a hyperkinetic hustler who\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s 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 d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu as familiar plot conflicts and stock characterizations loom large in Wedge\u2019s 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\u2019s engaging earnestness as Rodney (whose head resembles a cross between an outboard motor and a faux-retro toaster) to Brooks\u2019 robust bombast as the roly-poly Bigweld. And even though much of Williams\u2019 shtick sounds recycled from his vocals for\u00a0FernGully: The Last<\/em>\u00a0Rainforest\u00a0<\/em>and Disney\u2019s \u201cAladdin\u201d franchise, he\u2019s undeniably delightful as he cuts loose with riffs on Japanese anime, pop-tart music videos and, best of all, the glorious\u00a0Singin\u2019 in the Rain<\/em>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n At its frequent best \u2013\u00a0Robots\u00a0<\/em>rocks.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March 11, 2005 |\u00a0Very early in\u00a0Robots, the latest animated marvel from the makers of\u00a0Ice Age, the extraordinary starts to seem perfectly ordinary. And, mind you, I mean that as a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-8805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","tag-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}