“ROBOT AND FRANK” My rating: B (Now showing wide)
89 minutes | MPAA rating” PG-13
Some of us mellow with age.
Frank Langella just becomes more of a bastard. On screen, anyway.
In recent years the 74-year-old Langella has had a fine old time playing our least lovable Prez in “Frost/Nixon,” an egotistic novelist in “Starting Out in the Evening,” and an evil Manhattan real estate magnate in “All Good Things.”
In the kinda sci-fi “Robot and Frank” he plays a more conventional crook, but his attitude still says “Don’t mess with me.”
The premise of Christopher D. Ford’s screenplay is quite clever. Frank (Langella) is an ex-con living alone just outside a small town. Frank is developing Alzheimer’s and his well-to-do son (James Marsden) buys for the old man a robot — the setting is “the near future” — that can do household chores and will provide Frank with the sort of companionship necessary if he is to keep whatever wits he still has.
Frank does not accept this gift gracefully. He’s pissed that anyone assumes he needs help, much less that it could come from a hunk of plastic and metal that he claims will probably try to kill him in his sleep.
But after a bit Frank sees new possibilities in his mechanical companion (who hasn’t a name…he’s just “Robot”). He decides to resume his old career as a burglar, using Robot to pick locks (he’s a wiz at it), haul loot and stand lookout.
Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella, Robot
Robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) apparently hasn’t been programmed with any sort of moral attitude and obediently does what Frank asks.
Do not think for one moment that Jake Schreier’s film is one of those tear-tugging melodramas where a lonely Golden Age3r forges a new friendship and reopens his/her heart. Robot, in fact, keeps reminding Frank that he cannot feel or express emotions. Which is just fine with Frank, who enjoys having his every order followed.
Indeed, Frank hasn’t a sentimental bone in his body. He can barely tolerate his hippie-dippy daughter (Liv Tyler) when she drops for a visit. In fact, the only person for whom he has any affection at all is the local librarian (Susan Sarandon), who has the depressing job of getting rid of all the books so the institution can go 100% digital.
“Robot and Frank” is a comedy, I suppose, but a gentle one with quite a few thorns poking out here and there. And while it’s hard to actually like Frank, it’s satisfying to watch him run circles around the law.
This is one codger who isn’t going gently.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
I liked this movie a lot. And although some things were predictable, quite a few were not, especially Susan Sarandon’s character.
I somewhat disagree about Frank’s thorniness. I think he does soften up quite a bit during the course of the film. And his annoyance with his daughter was not so much directed at her, as it was impatience that she had arrived at a really awkward time, interrupting his carefully planned “window of opportunity” to pull off his heist.
I enjoyed this film a great deal, but it definitely requires a LOT of suspension of disbelief. First of course is Robot, who manages to do things that take humans years of skill building … and in so many wildly diverse areas. I can’t believe that will be accomplished in the “near future” if ever. BUT I accept Robot as a fantasy bit around which the plot turns.
More difficult to accept is the part that didn’t seem to be meant as fantasy, Frank’s dementia. It’s pretty unbelievable that anyone whose dementia had progressed to the point of being incapable of remembering a profound life connection, or needing institutionalization, would be functioning on such a high level in other areas, outsmarting just about everybody.
Fun film though.