Robot & Frank  (2012)

We all fear aging. The future, though, is supposed to make it a bit easier, right? Better medicine, artificial organs, robot doctors...we sort of assume that as technology improves, our lives will be better too. With "Robot & Frank", we see a "near future" that is different enough to notice, but similar enough to still be recognizable. Some things are better, some seem worse.

Frank is an elderly man, living alone in his home in upstate New York. He's divorced, his daughter is traveling in Turkmenistan, his son lives five hours away but makes weekly visits to check up on his dad. After some concerns about his father's mental state, the son brings a gift - an anthropomorphic robot health aide. Frank is initially dismissive of the robot, but eventually discovers it can be helpful in ways beyond the preset programming. Frank is a 'retired' cat burglar, and the rush that goes along with stealing is still one that he chases. A chance theft in a small store shows Frank that Robot could be a perfect accomplice to help rekindle the old fire.

This setup could have turned into an oddball buddy comedy, a grumpy old man and his robot running around robbing people. Instead, the depressingly realistic aspects of old age and senility keep appearing. One of the most heart-breaking things was seeing Frank completely lucid and focused one moment, then suddenly not remember who he was talking to one moment ago. Frank Langella nails the transitions without seeming forced, a real example of great acting.

The Robot is interesting in itself. Setting the time to be "the near future" kept the robot from being too advanced, too intelligent, too humanoid. It was clearly modeled after the ASIMO, with a solid white body and expressionless black glass "face", yet it still managed to have a personality. Peter Sarsgaard voiced Robot, and even though he maintained a monotone robot voice, he still had a good enough script to work with to bring some emotion to the role.

There was a pretty nice balance of humor, seriousness, and sadness throughout this whole movie. The oddness of a robot doing gardening or cooking was countered by the bleak reality of a person forgetting that their favorite restaurant has been closed for years or that their son hasn't been in college in over a decade. As much as I like far-flung futuristic sci-fi movies, sometimes it's a nice break to watch something that seems more real, a truer vision of how society will embrace or shun the advances in technology.

 

 

On the [Celluloid Hero] scale, "Robot & Frank" gets a 7 out of 10.

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