Robotropolis

I'm not going to really get into depth about this movie, nor make this a long review.

Just know that, it lacks creativity. It really, really sucks. The acting is horrible, the storyline is pointless. Whoever decided to direct this movie didn't try hard enough; whoever came up with this movie should have went back to the drawing board. I made a movie in high-school back in 2004 and it was better than this piece of work. The animations they used were very obvious, not believe able at all. The effects looked sloppy and it look like there was no effort at all. The only believable effects about this whole movie was the camera moving.

The end.

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!!!

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.

I guess I am not critic enough to slam a movie I haven't even watched like other "reviewers" of this film, so I can tell you I watched all of Robotropolis; not to look for things to gripe about but to take it on its own merits and just have some fun. It's about robots going berserk and killing people - and that is what happens. The CG design and integration into the live action was pretty good, the locations were unusual and interesting, the action kept up a good pace, and it didn't get excessively grisly, though there is some moderately graphic unpleasantness. There were occasional flashes of wit in the dialog and a little inventive camera-work in the chase scenes, but in the end it's a robot rampage movie. Sometimes it's going to be kind of silly. If that's not what you want in a movie, don't watch it. I found it adequately entertaining, it kept my interest and I don't feel I was cheated of my time as I sometimes have with flashier, more expensive movies. Just a decent B movie. Comparisons, they say, are odious and taking it for what it is, not what I think it should have been instead, I think everyone involved did a pretty good job. Some things are just for fun and I liked this fine.

I found this movie is not as bad as the reviews and ratings claim it is.

Again, everything depends on your movie tastes and preferences.

But if you like movies such as "District 9". "metal tornado". or some other type of space channel or Sci-Fi channel movies, oh, and also cannot forget these "found footage" genres, then you might be able to get along fine with this movie.

but if your expecting a "star trek" type movie, or some popular science fiction movie, then you may be disappointed. This just goes to show you Cannot always go by the user ratings or reviews that's for sure.