Robot and Frank: Movie Review

Robot and Frank: Movie Review

Cast: Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, James Marsden, Liv Tyler, Jeremy Sisto, Voice of Peter Sarsgaard
Director: Jake Schreier

Sometime in the very near future, robots live among us as carers for the elderly.

Ageing ex-convict and thief, Frank (Frank Langella) lives alone away from his family and is starting to show severe signs of mental deterioration and dementia.

When his son Hunter (Marsden) visits, he's so shocked by how quickly his father is sliding into dementia, that he gives him a robot to help him with the daily life.

Initially reticent to bond with the robot butler or allow it to help at all, Frank begins to warm to it, when it helps him shoplift. That plants a seed within Frank's mind, and soon, he's back to planning heists with his electronic pal, who believes that the work Frank's doing is aiding his memory.

Frank turns his attention to stealing a book from the local library, Don Quixote run by Susan Sarandon's head librarian, Jennifer. Mainly because the library's being closed down, the books phased out and stored electronically, something which Frank doesn't agree with.

However, Frank's soon looking to carry off an even bigger heist with his robot chum....

Robot and Frank is a saccharine movie with a simple story and thankfully, a masterclass of acting as its central performance.

Frank Langella is mightily impressive as the ex-con whose life is falling apart around him but who refuses to acknowledge that it's happening. He gives a great turn in this character piece, as a man who's fighting against the tides of time and winds of change - as well as with the loss of his memory and life as he knows it. Combined with a twinkle in his eye when planning the heists with the Peter Sarsgaard voiced caretaker robot, Langella is compelling, humbling and touching from beginning to end - in fact, you can't help but empathise with him right away.

Sarsgaard channels HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of vocal performance from the white lego  legged style robot - a sort of space-helmeted white-washed Twiki from Buck Rogers; a sympathetic Sarandon works well in her all too brief scenes (the reasons for which become clear at the end) and Marsden and a principled and lecturey Tyler do wonders with their estranged siblings, who share different views on the place of robots within society.

There's also a humorous script at play too - with some laughs coming from the most unexpected of places; a pair of robots, when forced to interact, intone that they "are functioning normally" when asked how they are; Sarandon's library robot is named Mr Darcy; the script is deft at throwing in great one liners as well as oddities to show how Frank's starting to disconnect from the present and becoming confused with the new technology.

At the end of the day, Robot and Frank is a charmingly slight heart-warming affair, a buddy film which is original and novel despite its cutesy rose tinted view and occasional narrative flimsiness here and there. On a thematic par with Martin Landau's turn in Lovely, Still from 2008, Robot and Frank has a masterclass of acting from an impeccable Langella which keeps you engaged from beginning to end as well as offering a tantalising "what if" look into a potential future.

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