Robot Overlords

The whole back story of this British sci-fi family film was summarized in a few frames flashed at the very beginning. "Three years ago... the Robots invaded Earth." "The war lasted just eleven days." Then a strange robotic being with an adult female face, a little boy's body and a disembodied voice declares that they mean Earth no harm. After their study of humanity, they will leave and never come back. They only have one strict rule for the earthlings to follow during their occupation: "Stay indoors!"

The story follows a group of teenagers led by Sean Flynn (Callan McAuliffe) who defy the robots, venturing out of the safety to his home to search for his lost father. Hot in pursuit is the ruthless Robin Smythe (a hammy Ben Kingsley), a human who had allied himself with the aliens. But Smythe is distracted by his attraction to Sean's mother Kate, (and I do not blame him as Kate was played by Gillian Anderson).

When we first saw the trailer for this film, I had no plans to watch it because it looked like a low-budget B-action flick with robots and unknown young actors. Indeed it was juvenile and very old-fashioned sci- fi, like something we could have seen on TV years back. The story could have been interesting, but the execution was not good, even cheesy. The corny title alone is a red flag that this is strictly for young teens, yet even they might find the technological aspects of this film too retro to be cool.

I only watched this film when I found out that Gillian Anderson would be in it. And yes, despite twenty years that passed since she gained me as a fan as Scully in "The X-Files," Ms. Anderson never looked better. She looked so good that it was not believable that she was the mother of McAuliffe. It was just too bad that her role here was too weak and insubstantial to merit her beauty and talent.

I would have rated this film lower, but only because of Gillian Anderson, I will be a little bit more generous and give it a 4/10.

This movie is not amazing. But then again, when was the last time you saw one that was?

Fantastic Four opened just before the the writing of this. With that film being a complete disaster, it saddens me that it gets just about a lower score than Robot Overlords, because the latter is far superior.

What to expect: Good but not incredible CGI (again, far more believable than FF'S The Thing...or anything else in it for that matter...) Good acting: Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson are great, and the kids are surprisingly good too. Good pacing: I didn't get bored at any point. That's quite rare nowadays. A cliché story, kept fresh by the fact that it's British. Personally, I enjoyed this more than The World's End; darn it - I actually felt a little bit invested.

Nothing more to say than that I guess. This is low-budget done right, and I enjoyed it. What more do you want? A cookie?

How can someone spend so much time, money and effort (Significant amounts by the look of things), get names such as Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley to join his project and end up with this sad excuse for a sci-fi blockbuster wannabe?

The storyline is stupid beyond anyone (above 3 year old) belief. The dialogues are moving between bad to embarrassingly cheesy. The acting is wooden at best. The CGI is dated. There is very little good to write about it. Dr. Who style? Maybe. How does that suppose to work on the Cinema screen??

Once the storyline was approved, this movie was doomed. If the 1% of the budget would have been spent on the writing, it could have made a huge difference.

This should have gone to video. Don't waste your money!

I've never posted a review before.

I'm sick to death of reading reviews from nobodies full of self-aggrandising rubbish of the look-at-me-I'm-so-knowledgeable kind.

When I read IMDb reviews I want to know the answer to one question: is this film worth watching.

Answer: Yes.

Extra comment for people who need more: It is not blade runner nor star wars nor aliens nor any other visually stunning or game changing movie. It was fun to watch as long as you remember it a film for kids. Yes the story is the same basic good fights evil that, um, oh yes, 90% of all movies released in the last 20 years are about. So what. It was entertaining, it was refreshing to see a SciFi film not set in the NewYork or some other major US city. Why should every Alien invasion land on the white house lawn. I liked it. My kids liked it. We were entertained.

What would you expect from a film with so triumphantly cheesy a title as Robot Overlords? Something fun, campy and silly, probably, as ultra-stern robots try their darned best to lord it over a bunch of utterly disobedient humans. That is, indeed, broadly the plot of Jon Wright's film. But, somewhere along the way, it seems to have forgotten to include much in the way of humour or silliness. Instead, Robot Overlords seems rather too intent on crafting a somewhat dour vision of a robotically dystopian future - which, truth be told, it doesn't quite pull off.

Three years after the dreaded robot invasion, the entire world is kept on a strict curfew - no one is allowed to venture outside their designated homes for more than a few minutes. All humans have tracking devices implanted in their necks, which allow the robots to swiftly find and vapourise anyone who fails to comply. There doesn't seem to be much hope left for the human race, apart from those who have decided to cooperate with the robots, like uber-smug collaborator Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley). But a quiet revolution begins when Sean (a decent but unremarkable Callum McAuliffe) and his buddies - clever Alexandra (Ella Hunt), her smart aleck brother Nathan (James Tarpey) and resourceful ten-year-old Connor (Milo Parker) - discover that an electric shock from a car battery can temporarily disable their tracking implants.

The film is not without its interesting moments. In fact, you might find yourself wishing that it would dwell a little more on the pockets of human resistance that we discover have sprung up all over town. Geraldine James - Kingsley's co-star in Gandhi - plays the matriarch of a community living out of a bar, evidently cobbled together from whomever was drowning their sorrows in alcohol three years ago. Sean's predicament also contains quite a few good sci-fi ideas, as he realises how he might be able to take down these apparently invincible machines.

But Robot Overlords never really fulfils its potential. Instead, it's a largely schizophrenic (and, fatally, predictable) experience. There are moments clearly targeted at a younger crowd: Sean and his buddies are undoubtedly the protagonists who propel the story forward, their youthful exuberance shining through when they mainline candy to celebrate their first taste of freedom. And yet, Wright also tosses in moments of horror so dark that it's impossible to tell just what vibe he's going for. The film opens with a terrifying and frankly not very kid-friendly sequence in which Connor becomes - quite spectacularly - an orphan. Sean also runs badly afoul of Smythe in another creepy scene that lays bare the extent of the robots' experiments on mankind.

At least there's fun to be had from the excellent adult cast, who manage to say a great deal with just a handful of scenes. Kingsley is delightfully pompous, a windbag who picks the worst side in a war to save his own hide. Gillian Anderson gets way too little to do as Kate, Sean's mom, but it's nice that her character doesn't merely sit around waiting for the guys in her life to rescue her. There's plenty of steel in Kate, as can be seen in her firm treatment of a former student and her repeated rejection of Smythe's lascivious advances.

As a director, Wright is patently drawn to quirky genre fare with a B-movie aesthetic and humour. With Robot Overlords, he finally tackles the genre holy grail of sci-fi, after exploring the supernatural in Tormented and alcohol-averse sea monsters in Grabbers. In made-on-the-cheap projects like this one, it's usually the special effects that let the side down. That's not the case here. The robots are obviously created on a meagre budget, but look largely decent for all that. What keeps the film from really soaring high is the fact that Wright takes a promisingly cheeky premise and removes most of the fun from it. The final result is inoffensive and mostly watchable - except for the robots' human avatar, which is a controversy waiting to happen - but there's hardly ever a sense of joy or triumph to proceedings. Surely, in a film bearing a title as flamboyant as this one, that's a crime of some sort.