Less than the sum of its parts

Rodney Copper-bottom is a robot with vision. Inspired by his idol, Bigweld (voice of Mel Brooks, in his animated feature debut), Rodney (Ewan McGregor) has decided to move to Robot City to pursue his dream of becoming an inventor.

And so begins the animated adventure Robots, in which nothing works out as Rodney plans. The young robot is challenged by a series of obstacles, each tougher than the previous one. But Rodney enlists the help of some new friends and his own moxie as he strives to achieve his dream.

In the fast-paced world of computer animation, timing is everything. If Robots – a project of Ice Age creator Chris Wedge – had been released five years ago, it might have been a groundbreaking film.

To be sure, Wedge and his fellow wizards over at Blue Sky Studios have created a unique-looking movie. The usual celebrity voices and a sharp, funny script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (Mr. Saturday Night, A League of Their Own) also make Robots an entertaining family picture.

But Wedge and 20th Century Fox, the major studio behind this film and Ice Age, face an inevitable comparison to The Incredibles (see "Recommended Rental"), the latest standard-bearer in feature animation. The satiric twist on the superhero genre adroitly blended state-of-the-art action into a warm-hearted family movie. In the ongoing game of one-upmanship that the animated film genre has become, something eventually will come along that will make The Incredibles look like Steamboat Willie, but it isn’t Robots.

It might be strange to use terms like "character development" and "plot" to describe an animated film, but Robots comes up short in both of those departments. Aside from Rodney, it’s really hard to care about any of the characters. A love story between Rodney and Cappy (Halle Berry) is grossly underdeveloped.

But judging Robots on its merits as an animated film, there is plenty to like. The art direction and the robots themselves are both unique and engaging. Wedge achieved his goal of making the robots believable as machines with an almost-human quality.

And after a more than 10-year absence from animated films, Robin Williams makes an auspicious return with his unmistakable brand of madcap humor (anything to get him off awards shows).

Robots might not be "incredible" but, as animated family films go, it has the right mechanics.

Robots
PG
Starting tomorrow at area theaters
Two-and-a-half reels out of four

Recommended rental

The Incredibles
PG
Available Tuesday

Hot off its Oscar win for Best Animated Feature Film, The Incredibles is being released on DVD (in both the wide-screen version and the standard full screen). Brad Bird’s wonderful film understandably ended up on many critics’ 10-best lists last year and even scored him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The movie concerns a family of superheroes who were forced to go underground after a series of lawsuits made their kind an embarrassment to the government. Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter lend their considerable talents to the mix.