Robotropolis

This is billed as some sort of war zone robot versus human in a desperate fight to the death; a sort of 'Terminator' meets 'I Robot', the reality is so far removed. So where does it go wrong? Well the synopsis is that a group of investigative reporters are dispatched to do a piece from 'New Town', this is an oil mining facility somewhere in the South China Seas. It is owned and run by forward thinking Mega National Industries.

Once there the CEO tells them that this is basically 'the future' in that robots are now fully integrated. They do all the jobs we can't be arsed with, like routine maintenance, security and taking the kids to school. They are all alike except for some security markings and look like a poor version of the Storm troopers from Star Wars - only poorly done in CGI. Whilst the 'reporters' are doing a piece to camera, of an innocent game of 'soccer. One robot "catastrophically malfunctions"! Well it shoots one of the other players and this is live on the news feed. This then becomes a 'Killbot!!' and as the news is fed all around the less than interested world, the fortunes of Mega Naffall Industries start to wane.

What happens next is an exercise in how to save production costs. I once saw a film producer say that the best invention for film ever, was the telephone. He demonstrated by picking up his phone and screaming 'what you mean Godzilla has eaten New York!?!' This would apparently save three million dollars. Well director Christopher Hatton has come up with a newish way, he has the anchor man in the news room have the reporter tell him what is going on in New Town as the camera has been eaten by a killbot ; so we are told that thousands have died and even more are on the streets fighting the robots. The only news reel we can see shows six lack lustre fifth rate 'actors' doing a ropey pretence of running away from some killbots who are armed with everything from electric carving knives, to flame throwers. The anchor man says at one point 'for those of you that pray, this would be a good time'; well I started praying to the gods of decent acting, good continuity, plot development and production values - alas my prayers were left unanswered.

This third rate, badly acted guff continued for a bowel shatteringly, boring 81 minutes, it would have made a better comedy but in the end it is a big idea versus a small budget and I guess the budget just won. The ending is seen lumbering before it is even over the horizon and by the time it happens you will be looking forward to watching a local news bulletin rather than endure any more of this unctuous tripe. I tried to like it and even laughed at one point, but it was for all the wrong reasons - this will appeal to no -one do yourself a favour even if you are tempted, just watch a community cable channel it will be time better spent.

What if in a not so distant future, robots become more or less the entire workforce of society? Sure, this idea has been presented before, and many "robots turn against humans" movies/stories are out there, but what if you present it in such a deadpan amusing way with the least talented actors you can find and let the idea fall on it's face the second it gets started. That is what you have here. So the robots turn on the humans for no apparent reason and start killing everyone, so the news crew that was filming the first murder must run for their lives (where are they going? good question). Back to the crew, this is by far the highlight of this movie, the presentation of the news is so damn funny, i could care less if it was intentionally made that way or not, it is pure comedy gold. Absolutely saves this movie from some REALLY low numbers since every other aspect of the movie stinks. So, run they will, chase the robots will, some die, some don't, the end. Except for the robots who make it to the sequel (it isn't a sequel at all, just a strange cameo type role in "Battle of the Damned" (see other review)Bad, yes but in a good B-budget way. You will laugh, trust me and it is nice and short, which helps. 3.9/10 +3 for the laughs, .9 for the movie outside of that.

Where to begin?

This film is nothing but annoying on so many levels, it lacks suspense, it lacks a coherent storyline, it lacks any semblance of grittiness or of the most basic realistic emotional responses from the actors (Even the most whacky Sci-Fi premises are generally redeemed by applicable emotional acting).

It was almost as if this film was created by a group of media studies drop outs, at all levels it fails from the talentless actors to the clueless direction to the ludicrous scripting and storyline to the terrible CGI...

I have seen better acting, direction and story lines in home movies on youtube...

The most annoying aspect is the insincerity of the acting...

I recommend you avoid this film like the plague...

PS According to Copyright protection agencies we are expected to waste our hard earned money on garbage like this before we have had a good opportunity to see what we are buying, this garbage movie is the perfect example of why the file sharing revolution is gathering momentum...

ADDENDUM : It appears that there are a tiny minority for whom such terrible acting, terrible scripting, terrible plot etc are an attraction, these people seem to be able to suspend their disbelief at such scenes as the saving of a child in one scene and in the next scene the child has disappeared without explanation (I can only assume that the child actor decided that this garbage was beneath her already meagre acting abilities and quit during production)....

These people are easily identified by their attention to criticising other reviewers who gave honest reviews of this garbage, to these people I simply say "If you enjoyed this garbage so much and disagree with honest reviews so much then I am sure you will not mind refunding the rest of us the hard earned cash we paid to either watch or buy this cretinous tripe"...

This movie explicitly alarmed me for the wrong attempt in introducing technology and robots in a hypothetic future where big bosses control the globe.

The idea and plot is definitely nice.

At the beginning, I was thinking that the idea of showing the facts of the disaster like it would be sitting at home in front of TV was original, because (you must admit it), that is how you would leave a disaster that is far from your house.

However, the overall result is absolutely below the expectations and it makes me thinking that there is nobody controlling the quality of a movie before it is actually released.

More than that, I am very surprised actors in such a movie would be satisfied about themselves, about the words they were asked to say, and dialogs in general.

I understand there could be also budget reasons, but I saw many movies where the budget limitations do not prevent the movie to have a good soundtrack, music and dialogs.

Finally, for who thinks that famous actors make a movie successful, it is not true. With such dialogs and direction, even Bruce Willis would have appeared as inadequate in such movie.

Our children in the future will probably see a robot in every movie, but it will not be a robot to make a nice movie.

I do love all things sci-fi, and I've been known to tolerate some fairly bad sci-fi B movies, but this was well and truly awful. No plot to speak of or character development, badly written and some pretty terrible acting to boot. It was almost as if someone stumbled upon a child's short story and decided to run with it as a script.

It opens with a rescue/recovery type scene which piqued my curiosity and promised something perhaps more interesting and in-depth to come. Unfortunately the opening scene is arguably the high point of the movie. What came after was just a jumble of badly acted live reporting scenes & interviews with a few chases thrown in later on, but overall nothing anyone will not have seen done better in other movies. Trying to write a summary of this movie is actually incredibly difficult as nothing of note actually happened in it.

I honestly don't know how or why I sat thru this until the end.

You have been warned!!!