By Matthew Moorcroft

Strong Recommendation

• Directed by Pablo Berger
• Not Rated

A story of friendship is, on paper, the surface level idea on display in Robot Dreams, the animation debut of Spanish director Pablo Berger. Told with nary a single line of dialogue, Robot Dreams is immediately charming through simplicity in a way not a whole lot of films are. A dog wants a friend, so he orders a robot from a telephone ad and hooray! The robot becomes a friend for him. But through a series of accidents, the two are separated, and now must find their way back to each other… right?

Robot Dreams plays it’s real cards pretty early on, as the name is much more literal then you would think. Much of the film are the imaginations of a robot desperate to return to a friend that, in his mind, he may never even see again or may not even know who he is anymore. These dreams are a mix of the surreal, tragic, and hilarious, but they are always poignant, and the film manages to squeeze a ton of mileage out of them creatively as they literally bend the medium of animation and cinema to it’s advantage. If there is any moment in particular that will make you believe in the power of 2D animation again, a moment where Robot exits the black bars of his widescreen cage would be it.

The other half of the equation though is Dog, whose own Robot Dreams are that of the more obvious kind – ones of longing and need. While Robot only understand his purpose through his friend, Dog defines his purposes through whatever companion he has at the moment, and without one he lacks that direction. Dog’s sections are much more on the melancholic side to Robot’s, and while they seem more meandering in the moment there is a real aching fondness for silence in these moments that’s effective. And not just the silence of no dialogue, but the ambient silence that comes with an apartment with only you in it. The hum of night without so much of a streelight going off.

At 104 minutes, Robot Dreams is very nearly too long, threatening to be scattershot in it’s overall presentation as it moves from one skit to the next. Particularly once it reaches Robot’s conclusive dream, you start to wonder if there really is any point to the whole thing other then a slow wait until the reunion. It gets particularly rough during the late segments of these, when the film almost stops where it does feel like it’s spinning it’s wheels and making sure it’s one thematic motif is laid in as thick as possible. And then it’s final 10 minutes occur, and suddenly it all clicks into place.

I’d really dare not spoil too much of the last bit of Robot Dreams, cause it’s best experienced for a first time viewing, but suffice to say it’s one of the most bittersweet, yet cathartic endings to an animated film in recent memory. It’s likely to leave the majority of audience members with a different emotion depending on their own life experiences and interpretations, and it’s not an easy, catch all finale either. It is both satisfying and unsatisfying in good measure, which is ultimately why it works.

It’s getting there that mostly prevents Robot Dreams from being a stone cold classic and one of the best films of the year, but I’d say that’s more of a testament to the strength of it’s conclusion then a mark on the rest of the picture. For the first 90 minutes, it’s a great, if somewhat elogated experiment that may have worked better as a short. But for it’s final moments, it transcends that to become of the great stories about lost love, found friendship, and those that we move on from. After all, there are plenty of fish in the ocean – you just gotta take the plunge for yourself first.