Robot Dreams review: ‘utterly charming’ and ‘laced with comedy’

“Robot Dreams” is a largely silent cartoon from the Spanish director Pablo Berger, and though it doesn’t have the production values of an animation by the likes of Pixar or Dreamworks, “it will capture your heart”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. 

Based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, it is set in the 1980s in a New York populated by anthropomorphic animals. Our hero is a lonely dog called Dog, who spends his evenings in his apartment eating miserable microwaveable meals and watching TV. One night, he sees an advert for a “build-your-own-robot”, and orders one. Once constructed, Robot proves “curious, kind, thrilled by everything”, and “devoted to Dog”. 

The film is beautifully made – “every frame offers a detail that didn’t have to be there but is, whether it’s the cloud of red dust that rises every time anyone opens a bag of Cheetos, or the adverts on the subway”. And though it could be shorter, it’s utterly charming and so moving that I found myself welling up.

Delightfully animated, the film is “laced with comedy, tenderness” and “sweetness”, said Cath Clarke in The Guardian. Arguably, it is a bit too “soft-hearted”, but still, I defy anyone to watch its “final moments without a lump in the throat”. 

The film’s evocation of “body-popping, boombox-blaring, graffiti-strewn New York” in the 1980s will surely give many adults “a Proustian rush”, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. But I wonder if Robot Dreams will appeal to many children. Under-12s “are not much inclined to melancholy meditation on the transitoriness of human relationships”; certainly my ten-year-old was not impressed. “It’s too everyday, too slice-of-life,” was the verdict.