"What do you get when you cross Aladdin with Bicentennial Man?"

Robots

directed by Chris Wedge (Ice Age) and Carlos Saldanha (Ice Age)
story by Jim McClain (S.W.A.T.) & Ron Mita (S.W.A.T.)
screenplay by Babaloo Mandel (Father's Day) & Lowell Ganz (Father's Day)

starring the voices of Robin Williams (Aladdin), Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks (Look Who's Talking Now), Drew Carey, Amanda Bynes (Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure), Jim Broadbent (The King's Beard), Jennifer Coolidge, Carson Daly, Paul Giamatti, Dan Hedaya, Jamie Kennedy (Dr. Doolittle 2)

lowdown:  Humans have enough of Robin Williams, commit mass suicide, leave planet to robots. 

low expectation: 
       Fox and Blue Sky think they're Hanna-Barbera by first making a prehistoric world and now making a futuristic one.  Speaking of which, when is the inevitable live-action Jetsons movie? 
       Robots will inherit the earth, there is no doubting that fact.  The way this is displayed in Robots, though, is so impractical.   Without humans around, robots really have no need for humanoid characteristics.  Having nuts and bolts for noses is not a productive feature for a machine, whether it is conscious or not. 
      There doesn't seem to be any logical reason to have the story take place in a robot civilization except that it provides an imaginative world that kids haven't really seen.  So why not just create a new creature, ala Snorks or something?  Well then the artists wouldn't have such fun making characters out of familiar objects.  So my next wonder is, why CGI?  Why not make a stop-motion feature?  Because CGI is the only thing that sells these days.  Hopefully the Wallace and Gromit movie will prove everyone wrong there. 

con:  Robin Williams schtick
con:  continues the tradition of modern animation toward verbal material overpowering the visual
con:  The puns and gags appear worse than Shark's Tale because they are even more forced and senseless

follow-up: 
      So boring that I chose to do work while waiting for it to end.  The jokes were too corny, the visuals too busy and the story too familiar.  Blue Sky definitely needs to either hire great writers like Pixar does or tap into some more relevant humor the way Dreamworks does.        

website:
Robotsmovie.com

synopsis/press release:
     Academy Award® winning director Chris Wedge ("Bunny," "Ice Age") brings his innovative filmmaking magic to ROBOTS, taking the animated feature film genre to a new, exciting level. For the first time ever, an animated feature presents a unique, totally imagined world – a wondrously clanky universe populated solely by mechanical beings. And never has a cast of this caliber -- encompassing no less than five Oscar® winners, as well as Emmy® and Tony® honorees -- been brought together for an animated feature. In the film you'll meet memorable 'bots Rodney Copperbottom (Ewan McGregor), a young genius inventor who dreams of making the world a better place; Cappy (Halle Berry), a beautiful executive 'bot with whom Rodney is instantly smitten; the nefarious corporate tyrant Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) who locks horns with Rodney; Bigweld (Mel Brooks), a master inventor who has lost his way; and a group of misfit 'bots known as the Rusties, led by Fender (Robin Williams) and Piper Pinwheeler (Amanda Bynes). -- © 20th Century Fox

Expectation Key


there's no possible way I will ever see this

I might eventually see this but I'm not really expecting much

anticipating the release of this one but I'm sure to be left unsatisfied

such high expectation of this film only leaves room for disappointment