(minor spoilers): A sweet little movie set in the near future and explores some fairly serious issues of memory loss, senior care, family, love and friendship. Frank Langella gives a masterful and moving performance as an aging ex-“second story man” who is has holes in his memory, is slowly sliding into Alzheimers yet remains high functioning. His family, a son (played with just the right amount of exasperation and love, commitment and guilt by James Marsden) and daughter (Liv Tyler playing a bit of a save-the-world/no time for family and something of a political extremist) drop in on Frank to assuage the guilt of family who is aware that something is not quite right with dad, but are busy with their own lives and need some help. Marsden’s Hunter has made the 5 hour trek to check on and clean up after Dad every weekend for just a little too long, and one weekend, brings a Robot to be his caregiver. This is where the movie really takes off.
Watching the Robot (who is obviously modeled after ASIMO, the Honda Robot that is featured at Disneyland’s Innoventions) and Frank’s relationship develop is where the fun and real story is, but watching Frank flirt with the pretty librarian (Susan Sarandon, who looks amazing and is so kind to this man who sometimes forgets what just happened the day before) is the heart.
The effects were very realistic, and the projection of the future of technology feels just right. I loved the little one person car and the wall phone! Robot was appropriately clever, patient, calculating, therapeutic and completely rational, perfectly suited to care of an elderly patient who needs just a little looking after, and is programmed to encourage a systematic strengthening of his patient’s mental processes through schedules and hobbies. I am sure the programmers did NOT have this particular hobby in mind!!
There are places I thought this movie was going to go, but the story veered off into other more interesting, personal and ultimately heart-breaking directions. The music was a little odd, and rather than underscoring the emotional journey, kept things just slightly off… but then again, maybe that was the point, there was something just not quite right about this man, a much as we wanted to believe in him.
The ending is not quite as satisfying as I would have liked and seemed a bit rushed, but I was ultimately left with the afterimage of sweet story of a strong man incrementally disintegrating into a hollowed out version of himself.
MOVIE RATING: 7 out of 10. THEATER RATING, Laemelle Theater on The BLVD in Lancaster, CA: 9 out of 10… as ever, a FABULOUS and very comfortable movie experience!
