Robot con un cuore

I am an elementary school teacher. I show this movie every year to conclude my unit study of the country of Japan. It is excellent because it isn't a movie typically already viewed by my students. They laugh (and cry) all the way through it. After viewing it, they always ask me "Where did you get this movie?" It is about a little girl, little boy, and a robot getting lost in Japan. The girl loves the robot, but there is an "evil person" after the robot strictly for profit. So the little girl and the robot run away (and soon befriend a little Japanese boy). I recommend it to anyone that can find a copy of it. It is very hard to find.

My review was written in September 1987 after a screening at Movies at Town Center multiplex in Boca Raton, Florida.

"Too Much" is a feeble comedy for kids about a little girl and her playmate robot's adventures in Japan. Modest Cannon offering is a summertime territorial release.

French writer-director Eric Rochat (who previously helmed "The Story of O, Part II" at the other end of the audience spectrum) has concocted a very flimsy storyline in which cute Bridgette Andersen is in Tokyo with her parents (dad's on a business trip) when "Uncle" Tetsuro (Hiroyuki Watanabe) gives her a prototype robot as a gift. She exclaims "You're too mch", so it's named Too Much, or TM for short.

There follows a series of slapstick misadventures as the robot refuses to leave her when she's due to fly home to America with her family. On the run, the twosome are helped out by a young Japanese boy in avoiding the grasp of evil scientist Prof. Finkel (Char Fontana) and his goonish henchman Bernie (Uganda).

Silly windup is right out of a Gammera monster film: heroes are holed up in a department store with lots of toy robots for a confrontation with riot police, only to be saved by hundeds of Japanese kids showing solidarity with Too Much.

Title amply describes Rochat's treatment of cute heroine Andersen, a pleasant moppet, she becomes grating with sweetness by film's end. Clutzy dialog is not enhanced Joan Laine's puierile narration voiced by the heroine. Scenic Japanese locales are photographed in documentary fashion, with music video-style editin to a peppy score by George S. Clinton. Gags are frequent but unfunny.

This is a story about friendship between an American girl and a robot named "Too Much", and enjoyable enough if you like Robot movies or "B" Sci-Fi movies. The plot is heartwarming and very much lovely, including some kind of misunderstandings about Japan. The soundtracks are good, especially for "Fun In Japan" and "Dear Friend".

It is sad that this movie is almost unknown even in my country, and above all, this is the last appearance of Bridgette Andersen on the screen. She's gone forever.

I remember seeing this film years and years ago when I was younger. You know I didn't think it was so bad, and what I'd really loved was the very touching friendship between the girl Suzy and the robot 'Too Much' (or TM for short). I quite enjoyed seeing what Japan was like and I loved the theme song 'Dear Friend', even now I can remember it as though it were yesterday. I think that this film is a lovely treat for all the family. I'll tell you something else, before this film I never really knew much about Bridgette Andersen. It was only last year when I heard that she had died years before that I decided to have a look at her life. I found out about she was quite a popular child star in the eighties and that in the nineties she got into drugs which lead her into a dilemma that she couldn't get out of. I also found out from something that a close friend of hers said about how she died; how one day after she had seen Bridgette the night before, she went to her flat and found people from the hospital carrying her out on a stretcher due to the fact that she had taken an overdose and sadly never recovered. That's why I think that this being her last film is a great tribute to her memory.

This Cannon production, produced by the notorious Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, doesn't seem to have received much of a theatrical release in North America. Not only that, the movie has never been released on VHS or DVD in North America. After tracking down the movie and watching it, I think I know the answer to those puzzles - this is one terrible movie. The main problem is with the screenplay. The movie seems to be making things up as it goes along, and this result in the movie not having much of a plot (it's mostly the characters wandering around Japan), characters that are poorly developed (especially the little Japanese boy and the bad guys trying to steal the robot), and failing to convince us of the friendship between the little girl and the robot, the last being the supposed heart of the movie. About the only thing of interest in the movie is that we get to see a lot of Japan, from the big cities to the countryside. But I think even viewers who have an interest in that country will find the bulk of the movie too painful to sit through.