I've Got a Pipe I'd Like to Put in Her Pinwheeler (Patreon)

Robots is such a criminally underappreciated movie.

I mean, maybe in terms of writing its pretty so-so, and by that I mean Wonderbot is a pretty pointless character, considering he was built by Rodney to help his dad wash dishes, his dad who is literally a sentient dishwasher and can therefore wash more dishes at a time than Wonderbot , who doesn't even have any dishwasher parts and instead just washes the dishes by hand, something literally any robot with hands can do, Rodney could have done more to help his dad at his job simply by convincing his boss to hire more dishwashers. So why the frig would anyone encourage Rodney to move to the big city to go show his invention to the most creative inventor anyone in their world knows as if anyone, let alone him, is supposed to be impressed with the fact that Rodney invented little more than a just another robot in a world populated entirely by robots? And it's not even like the technical skill necessary to build Wonderbot would be impressive in that world, considering his parents did more or less the same thing to build him, because that's just how their race naturally reproduces. Rodney didn't invent shit, he did the robot equivalent of whackin' it

What I would have done differently is, instead of having him invent Wonderbot, he simply just invents a more efficient dishwasher that works much faster, he upgrades the already-existing invention. Rather than try to move to the big city to prove himself, and his dad for some reason entertaining that decision, he does so with the full confidence and support of everyone he's leaving, making who he meets in Robot City the people he needs to prove himself to, that way we still have the underdog element. When he gets caught up in Ratchet's upgrade scheme, rather than it being just for building spare parts for the outmodes so they don't need to buy upgrades, he builds them better spare parts that last even longer than the ones Ratchet discontinued, so Rodney doesn't just fix the outmodes, he UPGRADES them, which makes his rivalry with Ratchet even more personal, since he's not just cutting into Ratchet's business, he's beating him at his own game. Then we definitely make a point to keep the line at the climax where Rodney says "they want us to upgrade, so let's upgrade," and now we have upgrading as a theme that gets carried throughout the movie.

Also, what was up with that armpit fart scene? The punchline is that Aunt Fanny farts for real, but neither make sense, they're robots, they can't armpit fart or real fart. Did a writer bump into a writer for a completely different movie on the way to the office, drop their scripts, and get one page from each swapped by accident?

Alright, maybe it's a little harsh to describe the writing as "so-so" over a couple tiny things I'd do differently, I just have zero tolerance for cute marketable characters getting shoehorned into a story where they're not needed just so they have another toy to sell, don't even get me started on Slimer from Ghostbusters, or the shoehorning in of fart jokes just because they know the kids will laugh at it regardless. And I don't even hate fart jokes, I think toilet humor gets a way worse rap than it deserves, I like simple pleasures and there are few pleasures simpler than the cheap laugh resulting from your butt making a sound, it's shoehorning it in where I draw the line, shoehorn is the keyword here.

But with that said, where it lacks in particularly-impressive writing it more than makes up for in visual fidelity, creativity, and imagination, and is exactly the reason that I apologize in advance if somehow William Joyce ever ends up seeing this, and I never do that, apologizing for making weird fanart is something I only save for the highest-tier of creators I respect, not that I don't respect a ton of creators, it's just rare for me to hold them in specifically THAT high of regard. (And I know he was only the producer on that movie, he wasn't the art director, but I refuse to believe he didn't have some influence on the art direction, as if you're familiar with his work, his fingerprints are all over it.)

Despite coming out in 2005, the animation hasn't aged a day, it still doesn't look out of place next to a modern CG movie. They also use every pun and visual gag possible for a movie about robots, like the bumper sticker on a street sweeper reading "Like my driving? Call 1-855-Eat-Scrap," Rodney's mom telling her husband "you missed the delivery" then holds up a box from "Build a Baby" before saying that "making the baby's the fun part," then after building Rodney and asking what the extra piece is followed by "we did want a boy right?", a pair of public restrooms marked with a plug for male and socket for female, etc., etc., etc., few movies get as much mileage out of their premise as this one does, a short list off the top of my head with an item I had to remove because it was tripping Patreon's bots doesn't do it justice. And the world they build with the visual gags especially is just so unique and creative that if one good thing could come from Fox being owned by Disney, it's this movie's eligibility for Kingdom Hearts.  

What is kinda strange about this movie for something that I would consider criminally underappreciated is that everyone I've ever brought it up to remembers seeing it. I've never really had the experience of mentioning it in conversation and the other guy just like "oh, I missed that one, which one was that one again?" Go check your DVD shelf, you probably own it. But for some reason it never really got talked about outside of maybe a couple memes until fairly recently. I'm glad that this movie is finally getting the praise it deserves, but it is kinda sad that it took the announcement of Bluesky closing to encourage people to do so.

Media companies can be a lot like the artists they employ, sometimes we don't really see their value until they're gone.