Deborah Ross

Readers, I welled up! At a cartoon! Robot Dreams reviewed

This simple, anthropomorphic new animation will break your heart

Miraculously expressive and wordlessly so: Robot and Dog in Pablo Berger’s Robot Dreams. 
issue 23 March 2024

Robot Dreams is an animated film from the Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger and while it doesn’t have the production values of something by Pixar or Disney or DreamWorks, it will capture your heart. Sweet, charming, deeply moving…. Readers, I welled up! At a cartoon! This is something we need never speak of again.

It is based on the graphic novel by Sara Varon and stars absolutely no one, as there are no voices to voice. There is sound but no dialogue, like Mr Bean, although the similarity ends there. It is set in the 1980s in a New York populated by anthropomorphic animals. Hail a taxi and your driver may be a Sikh elephant, or your FedEx delivery guy may be a bull, and look at this warthog washing his car while swinging his big old bottom to mambo music from the radio. It’s delightful. I want to move there.

Readers, I welled up! At a cartoon! This is something we need never speak of again

But our main character, a dog called ‘Dog’, is sad.

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