I like Jack Whitehall and his style of comedy, so when I saw the general premise of Robots, I was looking forward to seeing this.
In the year 2032, remarkable advancements in robotics granted humanity the ability to employ highly realistic androids as servants and manual laborers. Among the privileged residents of an affluent suburb, Elaine (Shailene Woodley) and Charles (Jack Whitehall) found a peculiar solution to bypass the limitations of their busy lives – they began using android replicas of themselves to navigate the challenges of dating. Little did they anticipate the unforeseen consequences that awaited them. Androids were originally used to replace cheap illegal labourers, and were not allowed to be used as robot clones, to do so is a major crime.
Ok, I am not gonna talk too much about the plot, the above gives you the general idea.
This film feels like a low budget film, despite the odd moment of camera trickery to show the doubles, it just feels very amateurishly made, which is suprising considering the cast.
There are some awful American accents from some of the periphery characters, which just seemed strange to me.
The problem with this film is that you have a well-known comedian as the lead, yet the film forgot to add any actual comedy. There are moments where you can see they are trying, but I don't think I raised even a smile throughout.
This really is a forgettable film, such a shame as the cast deserved more, but I guess it was a payday, not that Jack Whitehall needs the money of course.
Shailene Woodley is probably the best thing in the film, and she comes across well.
The Good
There is a nice moment where a friend of Charles hugs both Charles and the Robot at the same time, and it looked very realistic.
The Bad
Way too long at 93 minutes. Poorly written story, poorly acted. Very cheap and low budget feel. When you consider the fee that Whitehall would have charged to appear, they might have been better using that money for the film, and using an unknown actor instead.
Overall
Disappointed in this, expected much more.
I score Robots a poor 3/10
Out now on Digital.
