6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.8 |
In a robot world, a young idealistic inventor travels to the big city to join his inspiration's company, only to find himself opposing its sinister new management.
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Robin Williams, Greg Kinnear, Mel BrooksFamily | 100% |
Animation | 79% |
Comedy | 76% |
Adventure | 62% |
Sci-Fi | 1% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS 5.1
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1
French: DTS 5.1
German: DTS 5.1
Italian: DTS 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Danish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Dutch: DTS 5.1
Finnish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Norwegian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Catalan: DTS 5.1
Swedish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1
Icelandic: Dolby Digital 5.1
Hebrew: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: DTS 5.1
Flemish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Greek: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish DTS = Castilian
English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Let’s face it: Pixar’s Wall-E has rendered 20th Century Fox’s Robots obsolete. Where the former is an emotional, thematically rich parable—a Prometheus/Adam and Eve tale for the under-10 set—the latter is little more than a clunky plot riding on a rickety rollercoaster of meaningless non- stop action. This emphasis on strong writing and stories with soul is what continuously separates Pixar from its less-successful competitors, whose films may work as mere entertainments but rarely rise to the level of magical childhood experiences. Robots just doesn’t grab you like the best Pixar productions. It’s characters are bland and forgettable, its follow-your-dreams moral just a little too pat, and it seems constructed entirely from the scrapheap leftovers of some far better, more thoughtful film. Still, kids love it. There are gross-out jokes aplenty and elaborate action sequences. Sight gags and one-liners abound. Robin Williams does his mile-a-minute improv shtick to funny-but-well-shy-of-hilarious effect. What else is there to say?
Robots
Pixar has set the bar incredibly high for CGI animated films, not just for story and originality, but also for the quality of their high definition Blu-ray encodes. Robots reaches for that level of visual excellence, but can't quite grasp it. Don't get me wrong; in most regards, this is still a blazingly beautiful transfer from 20th Century Fox. CGI has improved dramatically over the past six years—especially when it comes to particle effects like smoke and fire— but Robots really doesn't look dated. The character designs—perhaps the movie's strongest feature—are rendered with exceptional clarity, providing a vast upgrade from the standard definition DVD. (And an even greater leap from the film's VHS release; Robots was the last animated Fox feature to shuffle out to stores in cassette form.) Of course, the film is also insanely colorful. The corporate drones may all be covered in slick metallic grays, but our rag-tag group of robot individualists sports bold primary and secondary hues, and the environments are vividly shaded. Black levels are deep, contrast is tight, and the film has a truly three-dimensional sense of presence. So, where does this encode falter? In a word: artifacts. There are only traces of banding in occasional fine color gradients—rarely, if ever, noticeable—but you will spot frequent aliasing in thin lines, especially in the features of the characters' faces. This might not be apparent if you have a small screen or if you sit far away, but it's readily visible up close and on larger monitors. Thankfully, other encode issues—noisiness, for instance—are of no concern.
The back of the Blu-ray case advertises a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix, but my firmware-up-to-date PS3 only detected a lossy DTS 5.1 mix.
That is, minus the "HD Master Audio." (The audio tab in the top menu also only says "English 5.1 DTS.") 20th Century Fox is normally great about
including lossless audio tracks on all of their releases—even the lower profile ones—so I'm not sure why Robots, undoubtedly a huge seller, is an
exception. Perhaps the rationale is that kids—the target audience—simply won't know the difference. Regardless, this is still a fairly strong track,
especially when it comes to directionality. The rear channels are used frequently, not just for ambience—the immersive sounds of an all-robot marching
band, the clamor in the robot equivalent of Grand Central Station—but also for whiplash cross-channel effects, circling the space behind your head.
Dynamically, however, the mix does seem somewhat squashed, taking up a cluttered residence in the middle range. High-end sounds aren't quite as
crisp as they could be, and low end is lacking. Likewise, dialogue just doesn't stand out as cleanly as it probably would with a lossless track. My final
assessment? Kids might not know the difference, but their hardcore audiophile parents probably will.
Do note that along with the standard "American" English audio track, there are also "Australian" English and "U.K." English dubs in DTS 5.1.
Robots is no Wall-E—it just doesn't have the same dramatic weight—but it does feature fluid CGI animation, great character design, and a brilliantly constructed mechanical world. A pity it's wasted on a rather uninteresting story. Still, animation enthusiasts will probably want to pick this one up, so long as they don't mind a lossy audio track and a video presentation that has a few minor encode issues.
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