Reviews: Robots and Closer



Here are my reviews of two movies that couldn't be more different in tone: Robots and Closer. Excerpts:
Robots: A young person off to see a benevolent dictator who meets misfits along the way: how much more like the Wizard of Oz can the plot get? (Indeed, the Tin Man, perhaps the prototypical mechanical actor, makes a cameo in the film.) But as might be expected, the path of true invention never did run smooth: Big Weld has been absent from the helm of his firm, and in his absence, the villainous Ratchet (Greg Kinnear), egged on by his megalomaniacal mother Madame Gasket (Jim Broadbent), has taken over the running of Big Weld industries. Ratchet introduces - for shame! - the profit motive, thereby condemning to obsolescence the millions of robots who can't afford upgrades. Rodney thus has to team up with a ragtag bunch of misfit robots to save the day. Robots, inevitably, highlights the overarching importance of a firm's role as corporate citizen over its duty to shareholders.

Closer: Just as much as romantic comedies often strip relationships down to the joy of boy meets girl, Closer strips relationships down to the aftermath, jump-cutting to the moments of pain, and showing that love comes with the power to hurt.

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