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'Robots'

By DAVE LARSEN
Dayton Daily News

Robots looks like a spiffy newfangled contraption, but its story is a bit of a clunker.

The computer-animated adventure from Blue Sky Studios, makers of the 2002 smash Ice Age, is a visual marvel set in a world entirely populated by mechanical beings.

Blue Sky Studios 'Robots' B- Director: Chris Wedge Starring: Voices by Ewan McGregor, Mel Brooks, Greg Kinnear Run time: 90 minutes Release date: March. 11, 2005 Rating: PG for some brief language and suggestive humor See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer   -- Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Robots":   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Designed by children's book author and illustrator William Joyce (Rolie Polie Olie), it's a fully realized landscape with signs of wear and tear, as well as nostalgic nods to our own engineering.

Robots' characters are physically comprised of art-deco appliance and 1950s auto parts. Their high-speed city transportation system combines a pinball machine with Milton Bradley's Mouse Trap game. Flocks of birds are the wind-up toy variety. Billboards read: "Got Oil?"

The clever, richly detailed spectacle will dazzle the eyes of children and adults alike. But for all of its visual ingenuity, the film at times is as flat as tin.

The stock characterizations and rote follow-your-dreams plot are stamped from the same mold as countless other films, making Robots feel like yet another product of the Hollywood assembly line.

Rodney Copperbottom (the voice of Ewan McGregor) is a "hand-me-down son of a dishwasher" from Rivet Town who dreams of becoming a successful inventor in Robot City. He's inspired to pursue that path by Bigweld (Mel Brooks), a Walt Disney-like master inventor whose motto is "You can shine no matter what you're made of."

Arriving at Bigweld Industries with his revolutionary Wonderbot, Rodney is given the bum's rush by Ratchet (Greg Kinnear), a corporate shark who has replaced the beloved Bigweld as company chairman.

Ratchet's scheme to boost profits is to stop making replacement parts, forcing robots to upgrade with expensive new bodies or else become obsolete. His motto: "Why be you when you can be new?"

Rodney is taken in by a group of "Rusties" Ñ old robots who will end up on the scrap heap without new parts Ñ led by the perpetually falling to pieces Fender (Robin Williams, reprising his motor-mouthed shtick from Aladdin). Rodney finds purpose repairing his friends, as well as the strength to stand up to Ratchet.

There are many cute gags Ñ "Making the baby's the fun part," Mrs. Copperbottom (Dianne Wiest) tells her husband (Stanley Tucci), before revealing a Build a Baby kit Ñ but they deliver more chuckles than laughs.

As with other such films, including Shark Tale and Shrek 2, movie references abound. Williams delivers a musical ode to Singing in the Rain, and there are amusing nods to The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix Reloaded, Animal House and Braveheart.

The voice cast includes Halle Berry, Drew Carey, Jim Broadbent and Amanda Bynes, along with Jennifer Coolidge and Paul Giamatti. Cameo voices include Jay Leno, James Earl Jones, Al Roker and Terry Bradshaw.

Robots skewers our make-over obsession, as well as corporate greed, but falls short of being a classic model. Like its characters, it's a shiny new machine assembled from familiar old parts.