Prime Time: Robots (2023)

Another film that simply re-uses a title from a previous, better, film (although maybe I am the only person to think back fondly on the animated feature with the same name), Robots is a standard comedy with a sci-if twist. More problematic, it’s a film with a lead role for Jack Whitehall, who rarely works as well in movies as he does in his comedy gigs.

Set slightly in the future, our world now has numerous robots available to take over various jobs (e.g. cleaning, hospitality service, refuse collection, etc). It’s illegal to use one as a stand-in for yourself though. That illegality doesn’t dissuade Cameron (Whitehall), a selfish and lazy young man who uses his robot double to meet and charm women, taking over when it’s time to “seal the deal”. It also doesn’t dissuade Elaine (Shailene Woodley), a young woman who uses her robot double when the men she convinces to buy her lots of treats figure that it is time for them to get jiggy with it. Elaine and Cameron eventually cross paths, in robot/human form, and a standard mix-up eventually leads to both robots falling in love with one another and running away. That puts both our main characters in quite a predicament, which forces them to work together in order to fix the whole situation.

Based on a short story, “The Robot Who Looked Like Me”, by Robert Sheckley, this is co-written by co-directors Casper Christensen and Anthony Hines, two men with separate backgrounds in transgressive performance comedy (one having worked on Klovn/Klown on TV and film, the other having worked with Sacha Baron Cohen numerous times), but you wouldn’t know that from the end result. All you get here is familiar and tiresomely lazy plotting, a wildly varying selection of gags, and no one memorable moment to think back on and smile about after it’s all over.

Whitehall and Woodley actually don’t do a terrible job, and certainly work better together than they do apart, but neither feels good enough to actually carry the film. That wouldn’t be so bad if there was a fun supporting cast to help, but there isn’t. Paul Rust is moderately amusing as the robot creator, roped in to help Cameron and Elaine recover their property, and David Grant Wright is fine as a father concerned about the erratic behaviour of his son, but neither performer can do enough to make up for what is essentially a double-dose of Whitehall. And things aren’t helped by Paul Jurewicz in the role of Ashley, a man who prefers to be called Fat Ninja. While I am not laying the blame for the annoyance of the character entirely with Jurewicz, he is an unwelcome addition to the core cast.

If you don’t mind the opening act, where a few of the better jokes are placed, then you should find enough here to enjoy. It has a standard runtime of just over 90 minutes, which is a plus, and certainly doesn’t attempt to overtax the brain. It just doesn’t ever feel like a proper movie, but more like a slick pilot for an anthology show based around the central idea. And as for the horribly convenient ending, where everyone gets exactly the final moments that you expect them to get . . . it makes you want to turn the whole thing off, dismantle it, and ditch the parts in some nearby scrapyard. In fact, the third act is bad enough to cause me to lower my rating one whole point. Others may be a bit more generous.

3/10

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Ani-MAY-tion Month: Robots (2005)

Shiny, bright, easy entertainment, Robots is enjoyable enough, despite the fact that it's a couple of notches below any of the better animated movies of the last decade. It's lovely to look at, with design work that holds up well alongside any other title from the decade, but just doesn't have much else going for it.

Ewan McGregor voices Rodney Copperbottom, a robot who dreams of being a great inventor. He decides to head off on a quest to impress the mighty Bigweld (Mel Brooks), the big cheese in Robot City. Unfortunately, Bigweld is no longer in charge of his own company, which is now being managed by the greedy, devious Ratchet (Greg Kinnear). Rodney still wants to meet Bigweld, and his persistence might just lead to an upturn in the fortunes of the poorer residents of Robot City (including Fender, voiced by Robin Williams).

Co-directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha, there's a wealth of detail and gorgeousness in every scene here. The same can't be said of the script, written by Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel and David Lindsay-Abaire. It's not exactly poor, but it just feels a bit flat. Even the lines rattled off by Robin Williams feel lacking in energy, especially compared to his far superior turn in Aladdin (over two decades old, but still one of the standout performances in any animated work).

While the vocal cast all do well, it's a shame that there aren't a few more easily identifiable voices. Williams is obviously Williams, and Paul Giamatti is always welcome in any movie, but McGregor provides a bland, American accent, and Kinnear seems a bit tame in a role that you'd expect him to seize with his usual relish. Brooks, great director that he is, doesn't make much of an impression as Bigweld, while Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Stanley Tucci, Amanda Bynes, Dianne Wiest and the rest of the cast are in the same boat. They all do a perfectly good job at reading their lines, but they're left bereft of any real personality. Funnily enough, it's Jennifer Coolidge, in a supporting role, who ends up as one of the most memorable robots, thanks to her fun character actually matching her usual onscreen persona.

Robots has all of the parts in place, all of the nuts and bolts are on, but it just put a decent motor into the gorgeous exterior. Aesthetically pleasing it may be, and a lot of the visual gags are very enjoyable, but the fact that it never fires on all cylinders (pardon the pun) means that it's unlikely to be anyone's first choice when browsing the family entertainment section.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/Robots-Blu-ray-DVD-Digital-Copy/dp/B005KP778S/ref=sr_1_5?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1400183215&sr=1-5&keywords=robots

Class Of 1999 (1990)

Director Mark L. Lester (who also wrote the story for this) was worried about kids in 1990. He had, of course, been worried about them ever since he gave us the enjoyably nasty Class Of 1984 but things had simply been declining since then. Which is obviously why he envisaged a future where military robots could be reprogrammed to be used as schoolteachers. Of course.

Lester uses Class Of 1999 to pose many questions. Just how far will kids go if the escalating teen violence is left unchecked? How many schlock-tastic stars can be crammed into one glorious b-movie? And just WHY would a robotic humanoid smoke a pipe?

The plot sees a particularly troubled school (run by Malcolm McDowell) used in a trial that involves three robo-teachers (Pam Grier, Patrick Kilpatrick and John P. Ryan) bringing the students into line and improving the entire education system through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero tolerance and the threat of major robo-violence. Death soon occurs and it becomes clear that the military programming is overtaking the educational programming but it’s hard to tell a deranged robo-teacher that it’s time for them to leave. That means that saving the day is up to bad boy Cody (Bradley Gregg), Christie the principal’s daughter (Traci Lind) and all of the other warring gang members, as long as they can stop fighting each other long enough to realise that they now have a common enemy.

Class Of 1999 is ridiculously implausible, slightly dated and hampered at times by it’s budgetary constraints. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun with an enjoyable tone and “message” that seems to veer from the conformist to the complete antiestablishmentism of the finale.

The acting is very much a mixed bag. Gregg and Lind make for a decent young couple that you want to see survive, Joshua John Miller has a character who is a lot more annoying here than the one he played in Near Dark, Malcolm McDowell is solid, Grier and Kilpatrick and Ryan have fun in their robo-roles and Stacy Keach plays an entertainingly demented scientist overseeing the trial.

Action sequences are lively enough and there’s plenty of destruction throughout but the movie really pulls out all of the stops in a final reel that pits the kids against the seemingly-indestructible teachers. It feels like a cross between The Faculty and Class Of Nuke ‘em High and I’m the kind of person who considers that no bad thing. Another “class act” from Lester. Yeah, sorry about that – couldn’t resist the pun.

7/10.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Class-1999-DVD-Bradley-Gregg/dp/B000HN31F6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390335292&sr=8-1&keywords=class+of+1999