Pablo Berger\u2019s \u201cRobot Dreams\u201d is a lovely fable about partnership and imagination, a movie that uses the form of animated cinema to tell a story in a way that couldn\u2019t be possible in any other medium. Without a word of dialogue, the director of \u201cBlancanieves\u201d casts a spell, crafting a film that is often truly lyrical, a creative exploration of relatable emotion that transports viewers to a world where robots dream of much more than electric sheep. It\u2019s a film that feels at times like it\u2019s not quite substantial enough to support a feature-length runtime, but every time it threatens to lose viewers completely, the sheer creativity of the project\u00a0brings it back together. Animation has long been a medium that conveys the power of dreams like no other, and Berger\u2019s film continues that legacy of art that has been freed from the constraints of traditional storytelling.<\/p>\n
There are two central characters in \u201cRobot Dreams,\u201d but the backdrop of 1984 New York is practically a third. Berger and his team have devised a version of the Big Apple that feels like a love letter to a city that\u2019s always humming and moving. It\u2019s not just the regular shots of things like the World Trade Center or the Empire State Building but the vibrant creatures that give this film a backdrop, from the finger-flipping punks to the vibrant breakdancers. The city is alive.<\/p>\n
Against this backdrop unfolds the story of a character known only as Dog. With his kind eyes and sideways smile, Dog is a likable animated creation right from the beginning of the movie, as he seeks a way to shake his loneliness in a city where everyone feels like they have a partner. Dog decides to order one through the mail, bringing Robot into his life. The two are instant BFFs, walking around Manhattan and dancing to the classic Earth, Wind & Fire song \u201cSeptember\u201d\u2014its well-known phrase \u201cDo you remember?\u201d feels like a theme of a film that\u2019s about lost friendship and even a lost time in a great American city. <\/p>\n
At the end of the summer, Dog and Robot go to the beach, but the lovable metal man\u2019s joints rust after playing in the water, forcing Dog to leave him there. When he returns, the gates are locked, meaning that Robot ends up stuck on that beach in that position for months. And he dreams. Dog goes about his life, doing some dreaming of his own, but \u201cRobot Dreams\u201d is a film about a strong connection that\u2019s severed and how that shapes the imagination of the two halves of the broken partnership. It might sound ridiculous, but it\u2019s kind of like \u201cPast Lives\u201d meets \u201cZootopia.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Believe it or not, it works, largely because of Berger\u2019s boundless creativity within a story he adapts from a comic of the same name by Sara Varon. There are no rules in a film about dreaming robots, after all. Why not have a snowman bowl with his head? Why not have birds who have nested in Robot\u2019s body whistle \u201cDanny Boy\u201d? Why not have a movie-stealing Busby Berkeley-esque dance number set along the Yellow Brick Road? Of course, Dog and Robot love \u201cThe Wizard of Oz.\u201d After all, Toto had a metal friend too.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pablo Berger\u2019s \u201cRobot Dreams\u201d is a lovely fable about partnership and imagination, a movie that uses the form of animated cinema to tell a story in a way that couldn\u2019t be possible in any other medium. Without a word of dialogue, the director of \u201cBlancanieves\u201d casts a spell, crafting a film that is often truly …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[34,33,45,51],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy-movies","tag-animation","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}