Robotropolis (2011)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Pretty Good

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Spoilers? First, even if I told you the entire plot up front, I couldn't spoil it for you. It manages to do that all by itself in its opening scene.The timing on this is all wrong. They just didn't get it to flow where needed. If you are somehow able to stay through the first, very boring, half hour, chances are you'll last to the end, as the pace does pick up a little.The whole production screams "no budget". It appears to have been filmed on location at "anywhere they would let us film free of charge". Seriously, it had the same look and feel as those awful home made commercials that sometimes make it onto commercial TV.Loose ends abound, not that you actually care about them. Computer graphics? Obvious. Plot line? Obvious. Those who will survive and those who will die? Obvious. The "sinister twist" at the end? Well, I have to admit I didn't see it coming, but that was because there was absolutely nothing there to suggest it was... oh, who am I kidding. The end seemed like a classic case of "oh dear, we forgot to have a reason behind all this. Let's throw in a 30 second scene to explain why we had all of those 5 minute scenes where nothing much happened.And those were the good points.Now for what I actually enjoyed about the woeful thing -1) I only paid $2 for it. 2) As pathetic as their whole news reader/news reporting style behind this thing was, it was true to life. In real life I have been interrupted 5 minutes before the climax of a movie by the station cutting to 'breaking news' where 'experts' babble on about what they think might be happening in a zoomed in shot of a deserted street where allegedly a terrorist had done something minutes before. They captured this mindlessness perfectly. 3) Female lead: "Oh, the little girl I hid here a minute ago is missing. Let's go find her in this town filled with homicidal robots." Male lead. "No, she's gone. Forget it. Let's run." They ran. Hooray! For once the realistic path was chosen, instead of the one-in-one-million long-shot that always miraculously succeeds.That was refreshing. 4) It somehow actually held my attention to the end. But then, I do deliberately go looking for woeful science fiction at the pawn shop because it amuses me.

This movie was almost good. The acting was on and off, as some of the actors seemed pretty good while others should not quit their day jobs.The robot effects were pretty good. They did not quite convince me they were really there but they came close. I have to give them points on the story. It wasn't bad and if given a bigger budget it could have been pretty decent.Too bad about the script though. Again, one of the things that stick out most about bad movies for me is how bad the script is. I've seen some movies with pretty good actors, but the movie sucked because the script was so bad you could tell the actor didn't even want to say the lines.So, not a bad story about robots running amok and killing everyone they come across, not bad effects (the effects company shows great promise IMO) but hit and miss acting and a poor script.I watched it once, I doubt I'll watch it a second time.

I'm actually watching this movie as I type this review. I've watched tons of bad movies, its actually something that I like to do. This movie is absolutely terrible. The best thing about this movie is... gimme a second... well the part where... nope. Okay, there are no good parts to this movie. Terrible writing, terrible directing and terrible acting. I've used IMDb for at least a decade and I've never written a review, but this movie was so awful I felt like it was my duty as a human being to keep others from wasting time. Transparent plot points, disconnected acting, and amateurish CGI and S/FX.When the first murder occurs at a friendly soccer game, the friends of the slain player (best acting in the movie), stood around not even responding to what had just occurred. Then they all kinda walked of camera as if someone motioned them off. No one stopped to check on the victim. Then the reporter was basically like... "Oh someone just got shot, oh no, we should walk over to the killer robot and investigate, yep he is dead... bye robot.. we'll stand here and watch you walk off." Then the soccer players meander back in ... like "Oh no the robots killed my friend. We are angry, rarrrrrrrr".I could go on... but I actually think this movie made me physically sick... and if that is truly the case, this physical sickness would actually be better than the movie.

I do love all things sci-fi, and I've been known to tolerate some fairly bad sci-fi B movies, but this was well and truly awful. No plot to speak of or character development, badly written and some pretty terrible acting to boot. It was almost as if someone stumbled upon a child's short story and decided to run with it as a script. It opens with a rescue/recovery type scene which piqued my curiosity and promised something perhaps more interesting and in-depth to come. Unfortunately the opening scene is arguably the high point of the movie. What came after was just a jumble of badly acted live reporting scenes & interviews with a few chases thrown in later on, but overall nothing anyone will not have seen done better in other movies. Trying to write a summary of this movie is actually incredibly difficult as nothing of note actually happened in it.I honestly don't know how or why I sat thru this until the end. You have been warned!!!