Director/Screenplay – Pablo Berger, Based on the Graphic Novel Robot Dreams (2007) by Sara Varon, Producers – Pablo Berger, Iben Cormenzana, Sandra Tapia Diaz, Angel Durandez & Ignase Estape, Music – Alfonso de Vilallonga, Animation Director – Benoit Freoumont, Production Design – Jose Luis Agreda. Production Company – Arcadia/Lokizfilms/Noodles Production/Les Films de Worso/Elle Driver/Mama Films/RTVE/M+/Canal+/Cine+.
A dog lives on its own in New York City in the 1980s. The dog answers an ad offering robots as companions for the lonely. He takes delivery and pieces his robot together. He and the robot soon become the best of friends, enjoying life together. The two then go to Ocean Beach for a swim but afterwards Dog finds that the robot has rusted in place on its blanket on the beach. Its’ body is too heavy for Dog to drag away. He goes and gets tools and books on repairs only to find when he returns that the beach has closed for the end of the summer season and that a locked gate and a security guard prevents any access to the robot. As dog waits for summer to roll around again, the robot lying on the beach has dreams of being rescued and reunited with Dog.
Sara Varon is an American graphic novelist and illustrator. She has been publishing works since the early 2000s. Her graphic novel Robot Dreams (2007) accrued a great deal of acclaim when it came out, including being selected for Oprah’s Book Club. The film adaptation was taken up Spanish director Pablo Berger, previously known for his take on the Snow White fairytale with Blancanieves (2012) and Abracadabra (2017), a gonzo comedy involving ghosts, mediums and possession. All of Berger’s work had previously been in live-action and to this extent he had to set up his own animation studio to make Robot Dreams.
Robot Dreams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film. I was curious to see what elevated an otherwise unknown film (outside of film festival circles) up alongside works such as Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (2023), which proved to be the actual award winner, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) and Pixar’s eminently forgettable Elemental (2023).
The animation itself is very simple – some okay backgrounds and only a few mobile elements within the frame. Up against modern Pixar and Disney output, this is mediaeval stuff. And yet the simplicity works for the film in ways that huge over-production would not. In a deliberate choice, there is also no dialogue to the film – there are assorted sound effects with the robot humming and the dog making onomatopoeia but no actual words spoken.
Robot Dreams is a film that wins you over with the adorable cuteness of the two characters, seeing them walking the streets holding hands, rollerskating and rowing together, eating hot dogs and the like. The film’s true charms come when it has the dog and robot separated by a seemingly impassable chain link fence blocking access to the beach and Dog resigning himself to have to wait three seasons until the beach reopens. We see the saddening dual lives of the two apart – of the robot’s dreams of rescue, of it even stepping inside a re-enactment of The Wizard of Oz (1939). Especially charming are the scenes of a family of birds nesting beside the robot and they adopting each other. These are interspersed with scenes where the dog goes skiing and dates a duck and a surreal sequence where it befriends a snowman. All before an ending that plays against the reconciliation that we expect.
One of the most unusual films about the film is the setting. Despite having very fantastical touches – a world not unlike the one in Zootopia (2016) where various animal species live alongside one another and this is taken for granted, or a 1980s where robots were commonplace – the film is very grounded in a particular time and place – New York City in the 1980s. There are recognisable landmarks – Ocean Beach, the Empire State Building, the subway system, Central Park, sitting under the Queensboro Bridge – and a lot of pop culture ephemera of the 1980s – playing Pong, MTV, Ginsu knives infomercials and the like.
Trailer here