Stream it:
|
Own it:
|
With: Shailene Woodley, Jack Whitehall, Paul Jurewicz, Paul Rust, Nicholas Rutherford, David Grant Wright, Emanuela Postacchini, Chelsea Edmundson, Jackamoe Buzzell, Samantha Ashley, Richard Lippert
|
Written by: Casper Christensen, Anthony Hines, based on a story by Robert Sheckley
|
Directed by: Casper Christensen, Anthony Hines
|
MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language and sexual content
|
Running Time: 93
|
|
Date: 05/19/2023
|
|
|
|
Tech Dreck
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
It's perhaps ironic that these filmmakers would employ cutting-edge robot technology to create such a primitive, dunderheaded, and borderline insulting movie, a romcom unfit for humans or droids.
It's the year 2023. Charles (Jack Whitehall) is a lazy womanizer who uses an illegal robot double, C2, to handle his dull workday and to seduce women for him. While trying to close the deal with his latest conquest, Elaine (Shailene Woodley), there's a mix-up. Charles accidentally sends C2 on his date, while finding himself at a board meeting. To confuse matters even more, C2 actually meets Elaine's own illegal robot E2 on the date, and they hit it off.
After spending the night together, they announce to their humans that they are in love and plan to take over their identities. Charles realizes that Elaine has had a similar scheme going, using her robot to con men into buying expensive gifts for her. At the same time, she figures out Charles's scheme. But, though they can't trust or stand one another, they must team up to save what's left of their humanity.
Robots employs the old screwball comedy formula that goes all the way back to the 1930s, in which two potential partners make each other crazy before realizing that they're in love (see Bringing Up Baby for the classic template). Here, both Charles and Elaine are horrible, unfunny characters that we don't want to spend any time with. Their redemption, pulled off in just about 90 minutes, is unearned; it would take a lot longer to redeem these two. (Couldn't the writers have come up with something more interesting than the old "womanizer" and "gold-digger" stereotypes?)
Their situation is is basic and blunt, relying on cheap scatological and sex-related gags, such as Charles urinating on his robot in the shower or the E3, "sex-doll" version of Elaine, dressed in pigtails, a miniskirt, and white stockings. It should have been possible to find some humanity or soul or tenderness in this situation, some kind of connection between flesh and machine, such as in the 1980s movie Making Mr. Right or Lars and the Real Girl. Or, perhaps, since the robots are the more likable characters, how about a story in which they dispatch their worthless human doubles, a la Horrible Bosses? As it is, Robots is a broken-down thing that likely belongs in the recycling bin.
|
