Robot Overlords

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?

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.

Aimed at the CBBC teen market, this reminds me of some kind of Terminator Salvation meets Tripods. (Ask someone 40 plus!)

The plot doesn't seem overly logical to me... The war with the robot overlords has damaged things so much that the homes and infrastructure of the remaining humans are relatively untouched with everything functional. Street lights blaze away, no one looks gaunt or starving with their nice clean clothes etc.

These superkids can disable advanced robot technology very simply, whilst the adults under curfew can still have a good old Victorian style knees up including bare knuckle fighting! Maybe the booze is provided free by the robots so they can study drunken humans? Anyway why travel vast distances across the Milky Way to put us in an unnatural situation for them to scrutinise us? All the Transformers had to do was watch TV and hack the net!

The robot overlords are obviously not that good at Overlording as they need a pantomime human villain to do the more mundane stuff, like kidnapping and using the mind probe machine and other admin duties.

I'm not really sure how he fitted into the plot as the whole premise seemed so ludicrous and un-apocalyptic that I got bored at the point where Gillian Anderson escaped from the castle and stole the horse!

I understand this was low budget but then so were the original episodes of Dr Who. The cybermen made for much better, and scarier adversaries. None of the characters had any depth and the acting lacklustre.

I think the average teen would struggle to get anything out of this film, let alone anyone over the age of 18.

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!

The title, Robot Overlords, alone already indicates that this is the campiest movie to exist in this generation, too dated that it would be an amusement for today's common moviegoers. It sounds like one of those generic fake films that are typically featured in romcoms or teens movies where it has a scenario in a movie theater, because apparently the production couldn't afford product placing an actual film, or basically just portraying or satirizing what the mass choose to pay for their price admissions. Robot Overlords does sum up with that standard, it's formulaic about its own plot: an evil force, unlikely heroes, a protagonist who has something special inside him which becomes the only hope to save the day. It's a total cliché, but this is one of those where people could shrug them off and see the charm of this little fodder. As a B-movie (for the "Family" genre in particular), it may have one of those corny qualities, but there is an appropriate amount of fun. There's nothing novel about it in the end, but this is a film that intentionally gives you the pleasure to turn off your brain.

Aside of its title, the movie seems totally committed to be this cheesy, but that doesn't let the negativity get in the way. The storyline is totally simple, it never tries to say something deeper or political or something else. Dystopian future movies tend to bring up something thought-provoking, but this film just sticks to the classic saving-the- world premise. And for once, it feels refreshing, specifically for not stopping by providing an overlong sentimental drama or a romantic subplot. The characters are only on a quest where they are often encountering robots, other ridiculous ideas and little twists that don't betray what it has setup. Otherwise, there is nothing actually special about it, but there's a real momentum that makes it easy to watch. When the robots start clashing, it gets too loud, the effects look good enough for a B-movie, bringing a sense of scale for these typically designed machines. but the shining moments are basically when the heroes are finding new discoveries in this world, it's basically just embracing what this should be an adventurous ride.

And just like any generic action film, the hero is the good-looking white guy. There is also a girl (who thankfully isn't mainly designed for love interest, since it totally shoehorned the romantic subplot) and the comic relief best friend. And there is a little kid, and this kid is always curious, because why not? The only interesting character side here is the villain who is attracted with the hero's mother, which brings an intriguing little extra conflict. The acting is B-movie at best; Callan McAuliffe has everything you would ask for a bland protagonist. While Ben Kingsley is delightful as the performance slowly hams it up the more the villain unmasks his true colors.

Robot Overlords might be too lame for this era of an even more convincing and edgier blockbusters. Movies like this would easily be groaned at and we can already see why. And for some reason, the film seems aware of its own trashiness and instead makes a simple fun out of it. Unlike many dumb B-movies out there that doesn't accept its absurdity by glossing it over with gravity that makes no sense until it stops being watchable, this film at least has the joy over its preposterous nature; the hero kids do impossible things, the villain sneers his plans, and they're against giant robots. But again, there's nothing brilliant about it, it never gave us anything meaningful in the end, but it sure is amazing seeing a movie like Robot Overlords that is confident enough to be released in today's blockbuster cinema.