The big city can be a lonely place. Packing up and moving to a concrete jungle where you don’t know a soul can be a physically and emotionally draining endeavor. One thing that can cure that drowning feeling in the pit of your stomach? A good friend. As clichéd as it might sound, good friends are among the best parts of life. As far back as ancient Greece, Epicurus was teaching the public that close friends are one of the main keys to happiness. A city that appears intimidating when approached alone will turn into a big playground when you approach it with some quality friends.
To create his most recent animated feature, Spanish director Pablo Berger took the friendly love at the center of Sara Varon’s 2007 graphic novel Robot Dreams and married it with his own love for New York City during the 1980s. In New York, sometime in the 1980s, lives Dog. Dog is all alone in the big city, so he orders a robot through a television ad. Together, Dog and Robot enjoy their summer days in the sprawling city — until the last day of summer, when Robot’s battery runs low and he’s stranded on the beach. Dog desperately tries to get into the gated beach, now made inaccessible to the public, while Robot dreams of getting back to Dog.
Robot Dreams is a type of love story we don’t usually see: Unlike countless movies highlighting romantic or familial love, this film focuses solely on platonic love. The connection between friends can be as deep and as meaningful as any other type of love, and while some films feature close friendships, more often than not these relationships are relegated to a side plot. Here the spotlight is on these two pals and the longing they experience for one another — a longing that carries the same kind of emotional impact seen in great romances like Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Robot Dreams’ absence of spoken dialogue highlights the music in the film, which functions as a narrative device in itself. Featured in an early montage of Dog and Robot spending the days together, Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September” is constantly whistled by Robot while he’s stuck on the beach, and included in many of his dream sequences — the song itself is of course about reflecting on the good times. The rest of the soundtrack remains in the foreground, selling the 1980s setting with instrumentals that echo street performances heard throughout the city. The music sells Berger’s and Varon’s nostalgia for vintage New York City and the wonderful memories that are locked away in the minds of those who experienced it. It’s bittersweet to see the World Trade Center looming over the city — a moment in history, washed away by the march of time.
Robot Dreams is a bittersweet film about love and longing that, while family-friendly, is likely more impactful to those old enough to remember life before the Information Age — before smartphones and social media. It’s a nostalgic movie filled with charm, but also an emotional gut-punch that will bring smiles and tears to audiences. The emotional complexity and lack of spoken dialogue might not make it a hit among young audiences, but it’s a great choice for young adults and older audiences looking to relive old memories — and make new ones.
