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Created Aug 30, 2012 11:04PM PST • Edited Jun 15, 2013 02:41AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Anyone who’s dealt with an elderly parent will be charmed by Robot & Frank, a gentle and deft SciFi comedy. Perhaps the best Alzheimer’s movie yet, though the A Word is never mentioned, it carries an emotional kick that leavens it in the end, elevating it to more than just a lark.

   The great actor Frank Langella is the Frank of the title, a Luddite living out his senior years when robots are the new caretakers. Oh yeah, he’s also an unreformed jewel thief who begins to appreciate his inhuman aide when he realizes it can help him pull a job or two. His grown kids and folks around town are fit to be tied, but the old con clearly has a spring in his step due to his new accomplice, er, companion.

   SciFi fans and adult children will find Robot & Frank a richly human viewing experience.
   Seniors will swoon.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Frank Langella plays curmudgeonly nearly as well as his contemporary Clint Eastwood. He almost does it too well, becoming less than charming on several occasions. However he’s a damn fine actor, convincingly showing the sharpness that a person with early Alzheimer’s can still have, and then more impressively showing the quicksilver change when dementia sets in. It’s a brave, subtle and ultimately bravura performance by a tremendous actor.

   Susan Sarandon is never less than very good, here as a pretty librarian who is the object of his affections. She too deserves credit for bravery, given Hollywood’s obsession with youth. She remains a world-class beauty, but shows the telltale signs of age, her hourglass figure gone, her skin sagging. Bully for her!

   Peter Sarsgaard voices the robot, while Rachael Ma is the robot. Sarsgaard isn’t quite up to Kevin Spacey territory from MOON, but is quietly affecting nonetheless.

   James Marsden and Liv Tyler are less than impressive as Langella’s grown kids. As always, Tyler is way less than impressive. Marsden is better, even if his prettyboy looks make him hard to take seriously.

   Others:

   • Jeremy Strong as a rich twit. He’s supposed to be unlikable and he is.
   • Ana Gasteyer as an angry shoplady with a bizarre hairdo.
   • Jeremy Sisto as a savvy sheriff. Good role for Sisto, who wasn’t this charismatic on Law & Order.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Barely OK 2.0

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Robot & Frank marks the arrival of some major new talent on the scene: Jake Schreier the director and Christopher D. Ford the writer. They spent hardly anything and made a first rate SciFi film. MOON comes to mind, though Schreier & Ford’s film is even lower budget and therefore especially deft.

    Keep in mind, the robot here looks like it’s been made to house a human and indeed it has. That human is Rachael Ma, with Peter Sarsgaard providing the requisite even-toned voice.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    The overly droll screenplay hits with a shot to the solar plexus in the third reel, elevating it to greatness.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.5

17. Sex Innocent 1.2

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.9

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.7

    The robot moves slowly and stiffly – robotically. Yet it accomplishes great tasks off screen, with the camera always catching it just after accomplishing some distinctly human feat, occasionally a super-human feat. I’m judging that to be surreal CircoReality and supernatural PhysioReality.

    The robot embodies an old school view of robots as human replacements, complete with the comprehensive set of physical and cognitive dexterities that humans have. There’s a word for that view and that word is “bullshit.” OK, the word could be cute or charming. Charming, that’s it, this reimagining of robots as we first did half-a-century ago. They’d have two arms, two legs, a body and a head atop a neck. Just. Like. Us.

    Robot & Frank also stoops to conquer labor-saving machines and their effect on people, a path of inquiry that’s been overrun lo these past dozen decades. It does this in cute if not especially original fashion.

    Of more interest is the movie’s exploration of robotic morality, with Christopher D. Ford’s screenplay cheekily exploiting an apparent loophole in Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Supernatural 4.0