Robotropolis (2011) is a low-budget B-movie about a seemingly idyllic island community tended by robots that suddenly and unaccountably start killing people. I happen to think that’s a pretty good idea for a cheap little sci-fi movie even if it’s basically the same plot as Westworld (1973). The trailer is intriguing showing off some CGI robot effects that while hardly top-tier stuff are certainly impressive for a modestly made film like this. Yet all of the reviews for Robotropolis are terrible. Is the film really as bad as they say?
Yes it is. It’s really really bad. Things start out well with a news crew chirpily reporting on the success of the island community and its well-behaved army of robot butlers culminating in a soccer game where things go completely wrong both for the characters and for the audience. While the news anchor delivers puff-piece journalism to the camera we see a young soccer player mouthing off to a robot in the background. The robot casually raises its arm and shoots the young man in the chest. (Some of the robots can apparently fire bullets from their hands.) It’s shocking and amazing and a turning point of the film. None of the characters expected it. The news producer is aghast. Other crew members gasp in horror. These are normal human reactions very different from the reaction we get from the pretty news anchor whose reaction is so stiff and unconvincing that the film immediately turns into an unintentional comedy.
“Chris! Behind you! The robot just shot one of the players!” yells the producer far away in a relatively safe broadcast studio. Hearing this ghastly news in her earpiece the news anchor Christiane (Zoe Naylor) does not look behind her at the killer robot. Instead of becoming shocked or excited she suddenly becomes bland. Her face loses all expression. “All right um…” she drones sounding distinctly bored and refusing to look behind her at the history-making crime scene “I’m being told that the robot has just shot a man in the field. I didn’t see it myself.” She sounds like she’s not convinced that it happened yet still stares directly into the camera and shows no interest in peeking behind her at the armed murder-bot just a few metres away.
This goes on for several minutes actually getting worse. Naylor who moments ago sounded perfectly normal while waving at robot shopkeepers now sounds like she can barely be bothered to pay attention to the impending robot uprising. It’s as if the actress’ imagination suddenly stopped working and she found herself thinking “wait a minute — this is just a green screen behind me. There’s no actual danger. None of this is real.” It’s unfair to just blame the actress however because all of the soccer players fail to act in any way either. They don’t seem upset surprised grief-stricken or frightened. In fact they wander off the soccer field as if nothing had happened. Things continue to unravel from there as more and more of the robots go kill-crazy and the journalists are forced to run for their lives.
Imagine if the notorious anti-masterpiece Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) actually had good special effects for the bird attacks. It didn’t — the CGI birds are hilariously terrible — but even if they were convincing Birdemic would have stunk because of the woeful lack of talent in writer/director James Nguyen. Here the CGI monsters are actually well-designed and moderately convincing which makes Robotropolis terrible in a different way. The robots look cool as hell abandoning their upright posture and running on all fours like wild beasts as they deteriorate into psychotic killers. This could easily have been a good movie if only writer/director Christopher Hatton hadn’t forgotten how human beings move and speak. Still check this mess out on Netflix — it really is bad enough to be entertaining.
