Another CGi animated film, and another example of souless film making. Like other animated feasts from the likes of Disney and Pixar, this another moral-based goodie two shoes example of a saccharin world which is often chosen, eschewing the darker, harsher example of work from the likes of Japan’s Miyazaki.

Happy endings are all around even with Miyazaki, but the journey there is often unpredictable and full of imagination. The same cannot be said of the current glut of one-dimensional boredom being manufactured in Hollywood.

Take on hard to swallow, sugar coated moral tale of a boy trying to be big in the world, following his dream to make something of himself – use it for several decades in live action films, then animation and finaly CGi when the time comes, and what you get is a sack full of animated crap.

It’s an intentional tear jerker, with all the usual elemtns. A childhood dream, a supportive family, the cruel men (or in this robots) that try to crush that dream, and the boy (or girl) succeeding in their ambitions to achieve that goal. Mother and father are happy, his reject friends are no longer rejects and everyone goes home happy except the bad guys.

You can imagine that every executive in Hollywood has a computer with about half a dozen plots, where you press large buttons for additonal options. You start off with some basic story about achievement, of good over evil, this will be by default. Then press the button that says add robots and that’s the film done for you. Yu get a one page print out of the basic formula, but note that the surprise element no one expected was robots. Indeed, what a money-making plan. Tomorrow, we’ll press the button which says “Monkeys”.

Rodney Copperbottom was born into a poor family with a father who works as dishwasher and overbearing mother, but both are supportive of Rodney’s ambition to be like his idol robot inventor. Rodney sets to work on creating ideas and inventions that would make his parents proud. During one incident, Rodney’s invention lands his father into trouble, and feeling unappreciated he sets out to the big city to make a name for himself and to meet his idol.

I won’t patronise you with the rest of the story, except to mention that he meets a bunch of rejects and has-beens, is taken in by them after meeting the big cheese only to find out he’s not a good guy, and that his idol has disappered somehwere, but will return thank to Rodney’s great big iron heart. You get the monotone picture.

You can probably expect the actors at the interview to come up with tried and tested lines such as, “It was the story that attracted me to the project”, or “It was really something different, I’ve never seen robots so alie before – gee golly!”. Yes, and I have never seen diharrea animated or in CGi form, but Robots comes pretty close to achieving that level. The film does have a high calibre of “talent” in the form of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinear and the monkey from the jungle himself, Robin Williams. It’s fair to say Robin Williams is still funny at age 4259, but even his comedy fails to raise the average level of this film.

The animation, the graphics, everything is pretty good looking in a very bland sort of way. It doesn’t have the smart wit or brilliance of something like The Incredibles, or even Brad Bird’s previous offering before the big hitter, in the form of The Iron Giant, which is a far superior film (and very loosely based upon Ted Huges tale). As much as I dislike and despise Shrek, it at least tried some original ideas. Robots is just dull, using CGi to cover it’s pathetic story or lack thereof.

This is spoon fed family entertainment. My kid brother watched this with me, as I often get him to watch this sort of tripe, and even he looked closed to sleeping, were it not for Robin Williams character Fender (my, how original, never heard a robot named that before). When the film ended, it was met with a “is that it?”. I know he was expecting more, and I promptly kicked him out of my room before he asked to see Labyrinth for the 800th time.

If you’re looking for a family film, that’s going to keep the kids entertained and possibly entertain yourselves at the same time, you’ll probably need bring duvets as the kids may end up sleeing pretty soon after it starts. It won’t interest you because you’ve seen three to four decades of films with the same story. Frankly, don’t rent this rubbish. Check out a Studio Ghibli film, or stick with Pixar (even though I find every film, bar The Incredibles, to be less than interesting).

Verdict: Grabage in, garbage out. One for the waste dispoal unit.