Robots is an animated children’s movie that may be the most revolutionary film to appear on the big screen in years – and I’m not just talking about the technology used to make it. A young robot named Rodney Copperbottom (voice of Ewan McGregor) moves to the big city from a small town to realize his dream of becoming an inventor for Bigweld Industries. Bigweld (Mel Brooks) established his company on the idea that inventors have to find what people’s needs are and find ways to fulfill them. Bigweld’s visionary concept is the production of goods that have a social use as part of a society where creativity is rewarded not just with getting paid, but with the satisfaction of knowing one’s ability and ideas provided a real contribution to making life better for all robots. Rodney was inspired by this concept.
But when Rodney gets to Robot City, he soon learns that the Bigweld of his dream has fallen by the way side as the more profitable corporate strategy of planned obsolescence makes more money. Bigweld, the benevolent industrialist, is shoved aside by Phineas T. Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) whose plan is to stop production of spare parts, push advertising that promotes negative self-images for robots who do not have the most recent upgrades, collect, dispose of, and recycle outmoded robots, and force everyone else to buy continually upgraded new parts. Ratchet is aided and directed by his mother, owner of the infamous chop shop, an underground (dis)assembly line where outmoded robots are taken apart and melted down for the raw materials for the upgraded parts.
As Ratchet’s plan is set in motion, Rodney and his friends – working class robots who don’t have the resources to buy new upgrades – quickly learn that they are the fodder for Ratchet’s new system. Rodney’s friend Fender (Robin Williams), whom Rodney repaired in a moment of desperation, points out that Rodney could repair all of the outmoded robots whose lives Ratchet’s operation threatens. So Rodney sets to work repairing an endless stream of robots seeking his help. Prior to this robots were set against one another in the struggle to survive by scrounging for parts in the garbage or from each other. But Rodney’s skills provide a temporary reprieve from Ratchet’s sweeper robots that would carry them to the chop shop and gives them the chance to realize that their common interest is in changing the way things are done in Robot City. In a stark parallel to our own reality, Fender jokingly announces that only those with insurance will get Rodney’s help. But unlike our for-profit health care system, he then pauses. "Alright everybody come on," he laughs.
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But as Rodney is only one robot trying to help thousands, he soon realizes that this can only be a temporary measure. Ratchet has to be stopped. One person who might be able to help is Bigweld himself. He has to find out what happened to Bigweld and convince him to come back and take over his company. But Rodney, with the aid of disgruntled Bigweld employee, Cappy (Halle Berry), finds Bigweld in a state of mental ill-repair fueled by disillusionment over how his utopian ideas have been replaced by Ratchet’s evil scheme. Bigweld is holed up in his mansion playing with a mountain of dominoes and refuses to come back.
Instead of giving up, Rodney, drawing upon his working-class father’s (Stanley Tucci) words of encouragement to not give up on his dreams, decides that the robots cannot rely on Bigweld to defeat Ratchet’s plan. "We have to fight on our own," he says to them.
So they organize their own plan and the showdown between the mass of robots who refuse to give in to Ratchet’s plan of violent destruction and profits. Will they be able to defeat the powerful army of advanced upgrades? Is there any reason to believe that the dream of a society that uses its wealth and productive capacity to provide basic necessities like repairs and spare parts can be created? Can a society in which even those of us on the bottom see our dreams and creative aspirations turned into something meaningful be realized? Or will Ratchet succeed in imposing his extremist agenda of destroying those who need repairs and parts in order to drive his profit-making schemes?
The makers of Ice Age have scored another major hit with this dazzling film that is suited for adults and children. It rivals well the groundbreaking work of the Pixar animation studios at Disney. The screenplay is written beautifully as a powerful mixture of humor and rare social relevance. Songs by Tom Waits and James Brown are dynamic and meaningful for the story. The star-studded cast of voices includes Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey, Paul Giamatti. Jay Leno, Terry Bradshaw, and James Earl Jones appear in cameo spots.
If you have plans to see a film this week, Robots is the one to see.
--Clara West reviews movies and books for Political Affairs.
