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I'm sorry, but this movie was REALLY bad -- one of the worst I've seen in a while.

FO mentioned the clunky dialogue. Example, Rock calls Duke Red "father", and Duke Red replies, "You idiot! I'm not your father! I just found you as an orphan after the war!" He's not saying that for the benefit of the person he's talking to; he's saying it for the benefit of the audience.

Then there's a robot detective who has no personality whatsoever, and only exists to explain to the human detective facts about their world. It's (presumably) supposed to be shocking when the robot detective is killed; however, since he has no personalty, I was just objectively observing how badly that scene was failing.

They also mention at least three times that robots are assigned to certain zones. The first time, Rock shots a rogue robot marked with "Zone 1", and says, "You're out of your zone." Okay, so we know robots have zones and can't leave them. Then the robot detective delievers long expository dialogue about how robots have assigned zones, and can't leave them, and how zone 3 is for sanitation, etc. Then, Rock is looking for two people in zone 3, and someone again says, "Zone 3 is for sanitation. Only robots can go there."

The whole plot is nonsense, starts nowhere, and goes nowhere. Like in V for Vendetta, but a million times worse, a world was not created. I guess you're supposed to think the president is evil, but what makes him evil? Does it matter that the robots are subjugated, or do they not have a soul anyway? (Anime seems to love this theme -- it was also in Armitage III and Ghost in the Machine -- but no character in this movie had the lust for life that Ray Batty of Blade Runner had.) Then the president is killed, but who cares?

The degree of technology that exists in this world is also never made clear. Robots exist, but in one scene where someone has to RUN back to headquarters to report, apparently not two-way radios. Also, one character uses a Mission Impossible-style disguise at the end of the movie, though it was not established (or used anywhere else in the movie) that such things were possible in that world.

No one acts like a normal human being, or even just plain logically. Example, the guy, Dr. Laughton, who made the Tima robot plans to steal her because he doesn't want to give her to Duke Red. Rock doesn't want Duke Red to get the robot, either, because he thinks Tima will replace Rock's place in Duke Red's heart. Dr. Laughton overhears Rock talk about this, through more expository dialogue. So, then when Rock plans to kill Tima, how does Dr. Laughton try to convince him not to? But saying he has to deliver Tima to Duke Red! Stupid!! Why not say he has no plans whatsoever to deliver her to Duke Red so Rock might as well let them go?

Even more stupid: Rock had been trying to kill Tima and a boy, Kenichi, for about the whole middle half of the movie. Towards the end, Duke Red finally reacquires Tima. Rock manages to finagle another meeting with her, where she expects that Rock will just take her to Kenichi. Why would he do something nice for her when he had been trying to kill her for the last hour? This scene is just baffling in its pointlessness.

The scenes where Duke Red tries to reassure Tima by insisting she's a robot, when she wants to be human, is also backwards. And his goal of having her sit on the throne makes no sense before the fact, and even less sense when he's surprised that it's disastrous.

Characters are also shot at, or even shot, without being killed, adding to the feeling that there's no cause and effect.


FO mentioned the art style. Undoubtedly, that's supposed to be the real point of the movie. The movie is really slow paced so that the camera can linger over certain images. A mixture of hand-drawn and computer-generated art is used. The hand drawn stuff encompasses Astro Boy style cartoonish characters along with more detailed depictions of machinery and architecture. However, the computer-generated stuff is rather soulless.

Of course, Ebert gave this movie four stars. It doesn't surprise me. It seems he doesn't judge animated films by the same standards that he does others. If this was a live action movie, I'm sure he would've noticed some of the problems.