Geekscape Movie Reviews: Robot and Frank

aka The Los Angeles Film Festival and What Molly Saw There, pt. 3

Now that you geek plebeians have had a chance to watch the trailer, let me give you my review of Robot & Frank, which was the last movie I saw at The Los Angeles Film Festival this year. I will do my best to stay spoiler free, and I will warn you if I cannot keep to it.

Now, the way I saw it was pretty cool, because before hand there was a short called “Robot” which actually showed the current state of robotics in our country and what we were using the AI for (typically as an educational aid) and what was being done to get people to treat robots as if they were real people. This was done typically cheating in a game of rock-paper-scissors would do the trick. Rather than reacting to the person observing them,  they’d say, “You cheated!” to the robot. As if the robot knows what it means to cheat. It was rather interesting and cool, and it definitely got you in the mood to feature to follow. You can watch the short here.

Robot & Frank is set in a very believable near future. Technology is familiar yet more advanced–Skype calls answer to your voice, the latest edition of the smart phone is  thin and practically transparent until in use, and cars still look like cars (though the director admits if they had the time and money for hovercrafts, they would of course have gone that route)–and the paper medium is a novelty of the past. It is both beautiful and terrifying; and a plot point surrounds the fate of the local library (where Susan Sarandon plays the lovely Librarian). It’s about the library environment as an experience rather than the books themselves, as everything is now settled into the cloud.

Susan Sarandon and Frank Langella with the archaic technology known as the book.

The story centers around the character Frank (Frank Langella). An aging ex-thief who in recent years has begun to have spurts of Alzheimer’s. Some days he’s good, others not so much. His son (James Marsden), no longer wanting to drive 10 hours roundtrip to make sure he is eating okay, decides to give him a robot helper. Although Frank is initially against it, the mechanical bundle of wires and AI eventually warms up to him.

Robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) is tasked to do one thing: make certain Frank takes care of himself. As a robot, he has no sense of morality, but he does have an understanding of risk. Believing a project will keep Frank’s mind active, Robot suggests they create a garden, but after seeing Robot’s ability to pick a lock, Frank gets his own idea about what kind of project they should undertake.

Better to pick a lock than to pick your nose, right Frank?

Grounded in a highly plausible reality, Robot & Frank grapples with some serious issues, in addition to being sweet, funny, and all around entertaining. Divorce, senility, and many more issues anyone with a family can share and relate to. Robot & Frank is one of those movies that should be remembered. It is also one of those rare movies that actually makes me feel sympathy for a robot, technology that I typically refuse to trust thanks to Skynet and Asimov (sorry, Wall-E). I believe it is Robot’s recognition that he has no morality that allows for me to trust him, but it may just be Peter Sarsgaard’s voice (sorry, Alan Tudyk). It’s hard to say.

Needless to say, this is a movie I would definitely recommend to anyone, though I do think it is geared to a somewhat older (35+) crowd. I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts come August 24, 2012, when it receives a wider release.