Written and directed by Pablo Berger

Based on the comic by Sara Varon

A lonely dog living in New York’s East Village in the 1980s orders a DIY Robot to be his companion.

I was looking forward to Pablo Berger’s latest animation feature. While I take care not to prejudice my response by reading other reviews before seeing a movie, I was aware that it had been critically lauded and garnered numerous nominations and awards even before it hit UK screens.

Hmmm. Perhaps my heart has been hardened by too many episodes of Chucky, but I needed a lot more from 98 minutes of wordless narrative to keep me engaged. Purely visual cinema, without dialogue to fill the seconds, eats story. Just ask Aardman Animation. I’m a massive fan of Shaun the Sheep, but the sheer amount of story and ‘stuff happening’ in the 85 minutes of my favourite ovine movie makes me exhausted just to think about it.

Obviously, Robot Dreams isn’t a children’s film. It’s an essay on loneliness, friendship, relationships, loss, letting go of the past, and the hope of new beginnings. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if had been fifteen minutes shorter. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more without the anthropomorphised animals, which I found cloying and fay. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if there had been more texture and depth to the animation, whose picture book graphical style grated on me after about ten minutes.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if its central characters – the robot and the dog – weren’t a pair of annoyingly passive dreamers, but given the title of the movie that was never likely to happen.

Verdict: If you like reflective contemplations of social isolation depicted through the medium of two-dimensional animation then this is definitely the movie for you – and many other people who clearly love this film – but I really do have more pressing things to be getting on with. 5/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com