Review | Robot Dreams movie review: story of a dog and a robot is one of the best animated features you’ll ever see
- A lonely bachelor in New York, Dog buys a robot companion and his life is forever changed. They explore the city together, until they are forced apart
- Beautiful and heartbreaking, Pablo Berger’s film uses this apparently simple tale as a means to explore the complexities of inter-human experience
5/5 stars
By turns heartbreaking and life-affirming, and achingly beautiful, Pablo Berger’s Robot Dreams is an animated delight, proving once again that all the photo-real, computer-generated whizz-bangery in the world is no substitute for great storytelling.
Adapted from Sara Varon’s 2007 comic of the same name, it tells the deceptively simple story of a friendship between a dog and a robot and, without any spoken dialogue, examines the profundities of inter-human relationships with more nuance and insight than almost any other film in recent memory.
Robot Dreams premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, ushering in an awards-laden festival run that culminated in an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature earlier this year.
The title inevitably recalls Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the 1968 novel that inspired Blade Runner, but Berger’s film could not be further removed from the bleak, dystopian world view of Ridley Scott’s movie.
His reimagining of New York circa 1984 is fuelled by affectionate nostalgia. The Spanish filmmaker studied at New York University in the 1980s, and the experience clearly informs his vivid, warts-and-all depiction of a city in transition.
It is here, in a world populated solely by anthropomorphic animals, that we are introduced to Dog, a lonely bachelor who pines for a soulmate with whom to explore the world.
After seeing a commercial on late-night television, Dog buys a “robot friend” and, from the moment it arrives, his life is transformed. Together they explore the city and revel in each other’s company.
However, their idyllic relationship takes a turn for the worse following a day at the beach. After hours frolicking in the water under the hot sun, Robot discovers that his limbs have rusted, rendering him immobile. Dog fails to move his heavy metal friend, and is forced to leave him there overnight.
Returning the next morning with oil and a toolkit, Dog is horrified to discover that the beach has been closed until the following summer. So begins Dog’s desperate odyssey to rescue his friend, while Robot, marooned on the sand, escapes his purgatory through a series of fantastical adventures.
As days turn into weeks, Berger confronts some harsh realities of relationships, from intense infatuation to mournful longing, and everything in between.
Younger audiences will delight in the quirky characters and their playful interactions, realised through the film’s bold, straightforward animation style.
More mature viewers, meanwhile, can revel in the period setting and transportive soundtrack, while Berger’s magical roller coaster of human experience tugs at the heartstrings.
Robot Dreams is nothing short of a masterpiece and deserves every ounce of the acclaim so readily given to its big-studio contemporaries.
