Electric Sheep?

Film: Robot Dreams
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on various players.

On my list of Oscar movies from 2023, there are two that have been impossible to find for me. I’m going to have to do a trial of HBO to get The Zone of Interest, I suppose. The one that was more problematic until recently was Robot Dreams, which wasn’t even streaming for pay anywhere. But, suddenly, it’s streaming on Hulu, and I finally got the chance to watch it and complete the Best Animated Feature category from last year.

Robot Dreams is fascinating for a number of reasons. The first is that there is no dialogue in the film. There’s music with lyrics and there are some vocalizations, but no one really speaks through the entirety of the film. This isn’t the first time this has happened, of course, but it is pretty unusual. Another interesting part of this film is that despite having anthropomorphized animals for most of the characters, this takes place in the real world. Our characters don’t just go to baseball games, but are Mets fans. They drink Tropicana and read Stephen King books and eat Nathan’s hot dogs with (gasp) Heinz ketchup. This, incidentally, is more evidence that the film takes place in New York; no self-respecting Chicagoan would ever put ketchup on a hot dog.

We’re going to meet Dog, who is very lonely. Dog eats TV dinners and lives alone and is too shy to make friends or do much of anything. He sees an ad on television for a robot friend and excitedly orders one. When it arrives, Dog puts it together, and thus we are introduced to Robot. Dog and Robot spend the summer together and become the best of friends, sharing everything.

This all changes when they spend a day at the beach. Robot, not really understanding the potential problem of water with his metal body, spends a lot of time in the ocean, and then comes out to lay on a towel. When Robot and Dog finally wake up, Robot has rusted solid and can’t stand up or walk, and is far too heavy for Dog to move. Worse, when Dog comes back the next day to rescue robot, he finds that the beach is closed for the season and will not reopen until the next June.

What follows are the twin lives of Dog and Robot. Dog does what he can to remind himself that Robot needs to be rescued. He still struggles with meeting people and having a social life, but eventually connects with Duck. However, Duck moves to Barcelona without telling him, putting Dog right back to where he was at the start of the film.

Robot can’t move from the beach and instead has vivid dreams of being rescued or suddenly being able to walk and then finding Dog and his apartment. Some of the dreams are based at least in part on what is going on around him. When some rabbits with a leaky boat find him, he dreams that they rescue him and he returns to Dog. In reality, the rabbits chop off one of his legs and use it to repair the leak in their boat. The dreams become increasingly bizarre until he is found by a monkey looking for scrap and is then eventually sold to a junk dealer, leaving just the leg removed by the rabbits for Dog to find in June.

All is not doom and gloom, though. Dog finds a new companion in Tin, and Robot is eventually rescued by a racoon named Rascal. But what happens if Robot and Dog meet again? And what happens to Tin and Rascal?

Robot Dreams is about relationships and what happens to them when the people involved in them are forced apart. Dog and Robot spend most of the movie looking for each other and trying to get back to each other, but in both cases, they either find someone else or are found by someone else and their lives move on. Those memories of each other are still there and they still hurt—they both clearly still miss the life that they had together, but is it worth destroying their present happiness to try to reclaim something that they once had?

Like many a good animated film, Robot Dreams is entirely appropriate for children but is potentially much more impactful for adults. Kids will certainly like the story about Dog and Robot and will certainly understand it on some level, but it’s the adults of the world who will recognize themselves and their own past relationships that have changed or been lost due to change, relocation, or other factors and may then wonder about what would happen if those relationships were somehow rekindled.

Nominations for films like Robot Dreams is the Academy at its best. Oscar has to bow to the favorites and expectations sometimes, but I love this category because it’s often the one where a surprise or two will creep in. Robot Dreams is that movie—one that would be easily overlooked in a world filled with animated movies designed to sell toys or rides at Disney. This is pure storytelling, and it’s a beautiful thing to see.

I enjoyed this a great deal. The art is simple but detailed and expressive, the soundtrack is wonderful, and the story resonates with virtually anyone. Good job, Oscar, for nominating this.

Why to watch Robot Dreams: It’s remarkably real-world despite animal and robot main characters.
Why not to watch: If you require dialogue, there’s none here for you.