Product Description
-------------------
Fasten your seat bolts and gear up for a hilarious, heartwarming
comedy that's fun for the whole family. Direction: Chris Wedge
Actors: Amanda Bynes, Dan Hedaya, Drew Carey, Ewan McGregor, Greg
Kinnear, Robin Williams, Terry Bradshaw Special Features: "Aunt
Fanny's Tour of Booty" Animated Short; Inside Look at the Making
of Ice Age 2; Xbox Exclusive Multi-Player Racing Game; 3-5
Set-Top Games; Commentary by Director Chris Wedge and Producer
William Joyce. 1.85:1, Widescreen format. Language: English /
Add. French, Spanish / Sub. English, Spanish Year: 2005 Runtime:
89 minutes.
.com
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The delightful designs of William Joyce (writer/illustrator of
such popular children's books as George Shrinks and Bently & Egg)
make Robots a joy to behold. The round, bouncy, and ramshackle
forms of hero Rodney Copperbottom and his computer-animated
friends are part of an ornate and daffy
Fender providing assistance. Rube-Goldberg universe of elaborate
contraptions and gleaming metallic surfaces. Rodney (voiced with
a hint-of-Scottish lilt by Ewan McGregor) is a young inventor who
sets off for Robot City to work for Big Weld (Mel Brooks), the
supreme inventor of the mechanical world. But upon his arrival,
Rodney discovers that Big Weld has disappeared, and the slick,
shiny Ratchet (Greg Kinnear, As Good As It Gets) is phasing out
the spare parts that lumpen robots need to function and replacing
them with "upgrades"--expensive and glistening new exoskeletons.
Unfortunately, from this suitable beginning, the story
degenerates into a series of action sequences that make very
little sense, though some are kinetic and fun (though others are
only there to serve the inevitable Robots video game). Most kids
will enjoy the sheer visual pleasure of the movie, but compared
to the narrative richness of Pixar movies like The Incredibles
and Toy Story, that pleasure is pretty short-lived. Also
featuring the voices of Robin Williams, Halle Berry, Jim
Broadbent, Amanda Bynes, Jennifer Coolidge, and many, many more.
--Bret Fetzer
DVD Features
Jennifer Coolidge returns as the voice of Aunt Fanny in a mildly
amusing new short, "Aunt Fanny's Tour of Booty," which allows her
to again be the butt of the joke. Fans of the characters will
enjoy both a 17-minute discussion of the robots' creation as well
as profiles of 11 of the bots, including early, almost
unrecognizable conceptual sketches and brief interviews with the
voice cast. The original short is fairly dull, and of the three
deleted scenes, the most finished is an extended version of
Rodney's initial meeting with Tim at the gate. One other is in
sketch form only but does preserve another performance by Robin
Williams. The kids' games are pretty good. There's a dancing
robot that will perform eight routines on command or in random
order. A memory game has a bit of replay value, and the
build-a-bot segment takes some thought and investigation. The
Xbox demo is a nifty little diversion that transforms one element
(the transport-pod race) of the full-length, single-player Xbox
game into a frenetic one- to four-player free-for-all.
In their commentary track, director Chris Wedge and
producer-inspiration William Joyce have to remind each other to
stop patting themselves on the back, but it is interesting to
hear them talk about old games such as Mousetrap that played a
part in developing the film. (Wedge's frequent references to a
possible "director's cut" might not seem like a joke to DVD
buyers who have gotten tired of DVD rereleases.) The commentary
track by the Blue Sky technical team might be better, offering
ins into the characters and the creation of the film without
lapsing into too much techie-speak. --David Horiuchi
Stills from Robots (click for larger image)
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