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In animation, the simplest things can have the biggest impact: the jaunty swish of a dog’s pointed tail, a day-at-the-beach scene rendered in jellybean colors, the way a snowflake drifting from the sky awakens a sleeping beauty, Wizard of Oz–style. Spanish director Pablo Berger’s gorgeous animated film Robot Dreams—adapted from a graphic novel by Sara Varon—is the sum of details like that, and the result is so joyously, casually poetic that you barely feel prepared for the story’s deeply affecting ending. But that ending is what makes Robot Dreams sing. This is a movie that feels, in the best way, like the last day of summer: radiant, bittersweet, redolent of memories in the making.
Robot Dreams, set in 1980s New York, opens in a classic East Village apartment, where a solitary dog named Dog slumps on his sofa watching TV and playing video games. When he turns off the tube, he sees his lonely reflection in the screen; it’s too much to bear. Then he sees an ad for a robot he can order by mail. Why not? Minutes later, ACME-style, the mail truck drops off the box, and Dog gets to work assembling his new robot friend, who, after a few false starts in the setup process, bleeps to life before his eyes. Robot and Dog head out to explore the streets of New York, a world of pay phones, of subway tokens sold in 10-packs, of little metal boxes that will dispense a newspaper for a few coins. This now-vanished world is their playground, a universe of grubby wonders; though Dog has seen it all before, he experiences it anew through Robot, who’s delighted by every sight and sound.
This half-real, half–nostalgic fantasy New York is populated by anthropomorphized animals: yaks in business suits, gazelles in dresses and lipstick, a bunch of leather-clad critter punks standing on the street corner puffing cigarettes. Somehow, it all makes perfect sense. In the subway, Dog and Robot encounter an…
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