Robot Dreams

 Delightful, like liminal, is one of those words which have been so overused in some quarters of the internet that they now sound slightly annoying to me... but it's the first adjective that springs to mind to describe writer/director Pablo Berger's animated debut. Robot Dreams is a lovely, bittersweet-but-upbeat meditation on companionship, loss, and resiliency set in an effective recreation of pre-Giuliani New York, presented with a clear-lined art style full of winning character designs.

 When Dog sees an ad for a DIY kit for a companion robot late at night while eating a TV dinner, he can't order it quickly enough; It seems like the perfect solution for his loneliness, which is economically established in a few, expressive scenes, and... well, the fact that he's channel surfing alone at night eating a TV dinner.

 Surprisingly, there's truth to advertising: Robot, once assembled, turns out to be the perfect friend, a naive, relentlessly upbeat companion who's happy to share that summer with his creator (to the tune of Earth Wind & Fire's September).

 Soon, though, the friends are pulled apart when an immobilized Robot is left behind in Long Beach for the winter season, and dog is unable to get to him until the beach reopens in summer (a knowingly silly conceit that the script treats seriously while still mining some jokes out of). So begins a long separation in which Dog embarks on a few side adventures and Robot suffers from a bout of the titular dreams.

 The storytelling is a bit scattershot, with long stretches consisting of mostly plot-free vignettes. But as time advances the thrust of each one of the characters' trajectories elegantly arches back so that they intersect one final time in a wonderfully conceived and immaculately edited - not to mention emotionally affecting - final scene.

 The film exists in a pure, innocent head-space where relationships are uncomplicated and always honest. Accepting that in the spirit in which it's offered is the best way to approach the material; Otherwise, you run into some thorny questions that the film doesn't even begin (and isn't interested in) addressing: things such as how healthy is a relationship where one of them was literally created to be a companion, and isn't he basically a child anyhow? (And that's before all the kooks who worry about Disney pushing a homosexual agenda or something crawl out of the woodwork).

 To support that point: Sara Varon originally wrote the comic this movie is based on to get over the loss of a beloved dog.

 Despite its innocence and the fact that every character is an anthropomorphic animal, it's a very grounded film; Its (very funny) humour is rooted in the everyday and its wonderful character designs, and the presentation of '80s New York is surprisingly detailed and textured. But it's the mature, thoughtful story that resonates the most - especially the way it acknowledges that we don't all get happy endings, and sometimes that's all right. Eventually.