Nuts and bolts revolt

Robots is like the engine of a Honda Civic under the hood of a Cadillac Escalade. It offers a reliable ride in an otherwise fantastic physical world. The animators obviously paid meticulous attention to detail, from the dents and rust stains on the robots to the rivets in the buildings, but they deflated the film by using a stock “small-town dreamer goes to the big city” plot.

Young Rodney Copperbottom (Ewan McGregor) is a poor robot made of hand-me-down parts who dreams of becoming an inventor and, somehow, the Scottish accent works on the scrappy ‘bot. With the blessing of his dishwasher father (literally), Rodney heads to Robot City to pitch his ideas to manufacturing legend Big Weld (Mel Brooks). But Big Weld’s company has been taken over by a money-hungry upstart, Rachet (Greg Kinnear), who discontinues spare parts for older robots, essentially dooming them to the chop shop unless some scrappy ‘bot can change things.

When Rodney arrives in hustling, bustling Robot City, he quickly meets a new friend, Fender (Robin Williams), and they head to the cross-town transport, which sets the tone for all the other action scenes. The robots climb into a ball, which is pinged and ponged about the city in a dizzying ode to the ramps, loops and far-flung flying of the Sonic the Hedgehog game. The immense buildings and erector set-like scenery whiz by, leaving a mild motion sickness headache, but that also could have been caused by Williams’ obnoxiously over-the-top performance.

Robots begs comparison to The Incredibles, especially since its marketing campaign promises it is “more incredible” than the Pixar production. And while both films are visually amazing, Robots’ use of pop culture references is where it loses. Each gag in Robots is clever, from the “Got oil?” billboard to star maps featuring Britney Gears’ house. At one point, Rodney removes a leg “bone” from a busted ‘bot and his red nose lights up like the game Operation. But rather than seamlessly weave the jokes into the story like Pixar did with The Incredibles, Robots pauses the story for pop culture montages set to mainstream hip-hop. It’s as if the script said, “Insert visual jokes here.” Opens March 11. ??