Review of Robot & Frank (2012) by Nathaniel B — 14 Sep 2012

There are some films that cry out for the pressence of human actors--movies (like "John Carter," for example) where every time some otherworldly creature strolls onscreen, you pray for a flesh and blood performer to take their place. And yet there are just as many movies in which human beings are a source of entertaining and those creatures, whether alien or mechanical, are far more entertaining.

So it is with "Robot & Frank," a new feature from director Jake Schreiber and writer Christopher Ford. Their initial idea is intriguing--the story involves Frank (Frank Langella), a retired cat burgular living in "the near future" taking on a "robot butler" (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard). The inital spectacle of the nameless caretaker's attempts to restore Frank's health are quite funny, but the movie reveals it's true nature in the first scene, in which Frank slips through the dark to commit a crime, not realizing that he's robbing his own house.

This is what makes the movie so sobering. Frank is not merely an old man who feels out of his time--he's losing his memory and reamins addicted to criminal pursuits that can only makes his life worse. "I want to go out clean," he tells his son Hunter (James Marsden), but by then it's too late: the damage is done and the police have long since realized that the aging criminal from Cold Spring, NY is behind a recent jewell theft.

Aside from the Robot, Cold Spring is perhaps the most interesting character in the film. Frank's cluttered house sits vaguely in a neighborhood, but it's surrounded by lush green forests--whenever he walks into town, he has to journey down a winding, woodsy road. It's there that he initially reunites with Hunter, who becomes an important piece of the story. Not only does give Frank the robot (who almost immedidately revitalizes the curmugdeon with his kind but firm insistance that his charge remain active and healthy), but we soon learn that it's no small thing for him to stop by his father's house--he has to drive five hours just to visit him.

It's details like these that leave you with something to ponder. And yet ultimately, I found "Robot & Frank" rather depressing--Frank, in all his forgetfullness and dilapidated ambition (his robberies grow increasingly fumbling) is sad to watch. In fact, what the movie makes you fear the most about the "near future" is not the rise of robots but something much nearer--old age.

That makes you all the more grateful for the slender hope offered by the family reconciliation at the end and above all, the industrious optimism of the titular robot. "I know you don't like to hear this, but I'm not a person," he says in Mr. Sargaard's layered, unchanging tone and the end. And yet that's what makes him the perfect friend for Frank--he never loses hope.

****:).