Man and machine make odd couple
Family drama explores defining features of humanity
Beneath a benevolent guise of cuteness and quirk, Robot & Frank pushes some rather big- voltage buttons as it delivers a version of the not- too- distant future where the human X factor has been decrypted into predictable algorithms.
You’re not fully aware just how unsettling the premise is until it’s all over, which is both a blessing for the oblivious viewer as well as a testament to Christopher D. Ford’s script and Jake Schreier’s direction.
In other words, this Sundance debut doesn’t feel like a close encounter with the existential void. It feels like a buddy movie, and a pretty funny one at that.
Frank, elegantly played in an award- deserving turn by Frank Langella, is an aging cat burglar.
When the movie opens, we’re watching him in stealth mode, cruising through the private belongings of some rube until he realizes he’s actually in his own home. Frank is suffering from the early symptoms of dementia, and he’s in denial.
His son Hunter ( James Marsden) is trying his best to balance the needs of his job, his young family and his dotty dad, but he lives hours away in the big city. If something goes desperately wrong, Frank could be in serious danger.
Meanwhile, daughter Madison ( Liv Tyler) is halfway around the globe helping starving children and war refugees with selfrighteous zeal, but she’s too distracted by her search for self to really consider her father.
It’s no wonder Frank feels a little forgotten. Fortunately, he’s so forgetful himself these days, he’s not too perturbed by the messy house, the mouldy food in the fridge and the absent family.
He’s more than happy to go to the local library and harass the sexy librarian ( Susan Sarandon) for certain hard- to- find tomes and fantasy book chats.
Yet, even here, in the time- forgotten oasis of thought called the town library, things are about to change in a drastic way: All the paper books are now deemed redundant in a time of electronic files, and the librarian who once loved and shelved the classics will be reclassified.
Simultaneously, a similar “upgrade” is taking place in Frank’s own home: Hunter buys Frank a robot to function as a constant- care attendant.
The robot, voiced with a hint of HAL 9000 by Peter Sarsgaard, can cook, clean and help Frank carry out his daily routine without suffering humiliation at the hands of another human being.
Of course, Frank hates the intrusion. As an old- school kind of outlaw, the insertion of a fibreglass and stainless steel housemate adds up to an Odd Couple scenario, with Frank playing the curmudgeonly Oscar to Robot’s Felix.
The back and forth antics of the two competing “programs” make for some good comedy with darker subtext, but it’s really when Frank and the robot start to bond that this movie hits a whole other level.
The robot does not come with a morality application or subroutine, so when it sees Frank steal a little soap bar from the local gift shop, he aids and abets his master’s criminal peccadillos — which immediately makes him Frank’s favourite accomplice.
Realizing his robot could be the best sidekick ever, given the machine’s new- found ability to pick locks and rationalize combinations, Frank starts planning his biggest heist ever with a little help from his close- circuited friend.
Ford’s script is cunning enough to find the right scenarios to make us question the larger issues without being obtrusive, but they do pull out the carving knives for one character in particular: The nouveau- chic geek who focus- groups everything, talks about “the new village” and secretly thinks about fornication and money while wearing ironic, hipster T- shirts.
These weasels are at the forefront of the technological revolution, and this movie reserves a special place in the narrative for such soulless hypocrites, but for all the pained reaction shots, there’s still no real catharsis because we know Frank cannot win.
The world is changing quickly and everything that makes us human, from our impulse shopping habits to our sex drive, has been plugged into a mainframe as data where it can be analyzed to increase corporate profits.
There is no stopping it, and this movie accepts the central dilemma as a fact of future life. However, in the little fade outs, narrative gaps and emotionally open moments, the filmmakers find a way to stretch out the mechanical beats of time and cut us loose into the ether — where the rigid mortal grid slackens and releases us through love, if only for an instant.
These are the holes that let Robot & Frank breathe because they resist formula, and in a movie that’s attempting to catch the unpredictable human spirit in freeze- frame, resisting the standard equation is a must — even if it offers no answers.