Rodney Copperbottom, voiced by Ewan McGregor, is a small town robot who has a gift for inventing things and a hope of moving beyond his quaint surroundings. He works side by side in a restaurant with his dad who is a dishwasher - literally a dishwasher. You open his chest and load in the dishes. Rodney has dreams of something greater. Armed with his unique talent for inventing, Rodney embarks on a journey to Robot City to meet his idol, the majestic inventor Bigweld, voiced by Mel Brooks. An iconic figure in all of Robot City, Bigweld has spent a lifetime creating things to make the lives of robots better. Once in Robot City, Rodney finds that things are not quite as he expected, and his quest may be a lot harder than he imagined. As he tries to navigate his way around this new city, Rodney befriends the Rusties, a ragtag group of street-smart bots who know the ropes. One of the Rusties, Fender (voiced by Robin Williams), immediately becomes Rodney's best friend and even lets his spunky kid sister Piper Pinwheeler (voiced by Amanda Bynes) tag along. They take him in, and for now, at least, Rodney has a home in Robot City. Rodney also meets Cappy (voiced by Halle Berry), an executive at Bigweld Industries who takes an instant liking to Rodney and sees a lot of herself in him. Along their adventures, Rodney and his new friends encounter unsavory characters who try to derail Rodney's plans to find Bigweld and save Robot City.

Somewhere along the way we came to expect great things out of every animated movie we saw, thanks to animation masters like Pixar and even Dreamworks Shrek. And anytime these movies fall below that standard that has been set so high we are let down and disappointed, but don’t be. While Robots is nowhere as grand as the Incredibles it is still quite a cute and fun movie. Sure the story is cookie cutter, a young and idealistic hero set out to change the world up against your typical tyrant, out to conquer the world where good shall prevail, nothing new but done with finesse it can be ok, and Robots did a fair job at it. The movie is no great masterpiece by any means, but neither is it garbage like Shark Tale or anything Disney produces when they’re actually making movies instead of trying to not take credit for Pixar’s accomplishments.

The trailers try and attract you with another Robin Williams zany character but it is not Williams who makes the movie but Greg Kinnear instead. He somehow manages to find away to mix the slightly over the top villain with a more believable madman just trying to make his mother happy, its like Psycho meets Michael Douglas from Wallstreet. Williams has his funny moments of course but he has kind of outplayed the zany character and it’s been a long time since it was fresh. The robots were charming, the plot was simple but worked, and the movie could be dull at times but in the end entertained. I mean not everything can be a masterpiece but movies like Robots that does manage to entertain while not really doing anything that groundbreaking can be a good way to while a way an afternoon. It is fun, humorous and most kids will love it and most parents won’t be too bored.
3.5 stars out of 5