Guerre di robot

First off (let me get this out of the way) this movie should be called robot war.... as in singular, not robot wars plural because during the entire course of this flick there's literally only one single battle between robots. The rest is ham handed acting, clunking dialogue, and a paint-by-numbers plot involving evil corporations, plucky reporters, hotshot pilots, and the extraneous character who only exists to turncoat. It of course recall an only slightly more well known movie robot jox from 1989, though some of the general look about thing seems to point to starship troopers 1997. Either of those movie is substantially better than this. Don't waste your time. 2/10.

I have to get this out right away, the main protagonist was horribly miscast. If they were making a live action movie of the Simpsons then he would have been too busy playing Barney Gumble to play in Robot Wars. Now as for the actual movie. I am lead to believe by the VHS box that it's a sequel or at very least a spin off of the movie named "Robot Jox," a movie I vaguely remember watching on the space channel late at night a few years ago. Where in Robot Jox people were fighting with super awesome robots in an arena over territory, the somewhat counter- intuitively named Robot Wars is about peace time where all those awesome robots have been destroyed save for one now used for tours through the desert or something. Then the get some other robot and fight for a bit. I hate to rag on the main character more but seriously, half the movie he's drunk and acting like a drunken slob which may be reason to retract my previous statement about him being miscast. I don't want to spoil any of this cerebral story line but you can tell in the kiss at the end that the girl was all like "hmm you smell like cheep beer and bad hygiene"

I paid $.99 for the VHS tape and the only further value I will gain from it is having filler for the back of my VHS shelf so I don't have to keep a movie I might watch back there.

This barely one hour long movie contains a lot of innovative ideas, such as a gigantic passenger-carrying robotic spider. Creative camera work in the passenger compartment of the spider really conveys a feeling of motion. The music is another pleasant surprise, as these types of films often lack considerably in that area. Considering the budget, which was slim, it should be considered an impressive production on the whole. The dialog is the weak spot, lacking the humour of its predecessor Robot Jox. Most of the acting is somewhat lame, partly due to the lack of dramatic build-ups. (Actually, creating drama seems to be a problem in general for the imaginative director Albert Band). The special effects are good, but in the spirit of the eighties. I think David Allen, who made them, is a genius, able to create satisfactory effects from virtually no budget. Anyway, this film is well worth a look for true sci-fi freaks. Only.

I bought this movie at a flea market mainly because it had a neat box. It's really not all that good. Let me put it this way, the title is misleading. The giant robots are pretty cool. But you don't get to see them that often. This could have been a good movie but it isn't quite good enough to bother buying (or renting) unless your a hardcore sci-fi fan. Oh, and the acting is pretty bad, too.

In the future of 2041, a cataclysm has reshaped the power structure of the world with the North American based North Hemi in alliance with the pan Asian collective of the Eastern Alliance. North Hemi is in conflict with marauders known as the Centros, and its relations with the Eastern Alliance are of importance to keeping the Centros at bay. Maverick pilot Captain Drake (Don Michael Paul) pilots the Mega Robot with his co-pilot/mechanic Stumpy (James Staley). The Mega Robot is used to conduct tours for civilians, but also carries weaponry for defense against the Centros. Drake is at odds with OpCom Chief Rooney (Peter Haskell) over his recklessness involving taking civilians through hostile territory and Rooney's dealings with General Wa-Lee (Danny Kamekona) of the Eastern Alliance whom Drake suspects may be hiding ulterior motives involving the Centros. When Drake's fears soon prove to be real, Drake, Stumpy, and archaeologist Dr. Leda Fannon (Barbara Crampton) must work together to find a way of stopping Wa-Lee's plot.

Another attempt from Full Moon Entertainment to follow-on loosely from Robot Jox, Robot Wars is in some ways an improvement over the studios previous effort Crash and Burn in that the Robots on the box cover and trailer have more presence and importance in the movie, and also unlike Crash and Burn there's more thought put into the production design with OpCom actually feeling like a tangible area and not just a repurposed abandoned industrial building. But while Robot Wars doesn't have the problems of Crash and Burn's presentation, it's exchanged them for problems with comprehensibility and storytelling with its narrative a confused mess using jargon it's made-up wholesale and rarely (if ever) tells you what it means.

Clocking in at a meager 72 minutes (not including credits) the movie throws the audience into this post-apocalyptic world where the world powers have shifted but unlike Robot Jox that at least opened with an info dump at the beginning giving us context for the world, Robot Wars does the cinematic equivalent of throwing its audience into the deep end of a swimming pool and calling it a day. The movie never lets us in on what exactly North Hemi entails nor does it give any insight into the motivations behind the Centros or the Eastern Alliance so even if you "know" what's going on you'll be hard pressed to figure out the why. The movie also has an unappealing lead in Don Michael Paul who seems to be going for a "devil may care" maverick a la Tom Cruise in Top Gun, but instead comes off more like Biff Tannen from the Back to the Future films if he were framed as the "hero". Much like Bill Moseley in Crash and Burn, Danny Kamekona is having fun as the underwritten villain General Wa-Len who's basically Dr. No by way of Colonel Kurtz, but as stock and shallow as the character is you have to admire Kamekona dedication.

The effects by noted stop-motion artist David Allen are once again employed as they were in Robot Jox and Crash and Burn, and they do give Allen a bit more leeway to stretch himself with the Robots, not as much as in Robot Jox, but it's a DTV film so we're lucky we got what we did. Most of the robot sequences are pretty reserved and don't cut loose until the last 10 minutes, but I will say that as far as robot fights go it's not bad, even if it has a rather BS Deus Ex Machina button in the hero's robot that ends the fight.

Robot Jox improves upon the short comings of Crash and Burn while also adding a whole bunch of new problems. The movie's story and characters are an absolute mess with Don Michael Paul rather lacking as a lead, and the world building and motivations are muddled and confusing. David Allen's Robot effects look nice and you get more of them than Crash and Burn, but not to the point I'd recommend a viewing.