Robot Dreams is one of a number of films to appear in the last few years that have touched on the human condition in ways that are witty, thoughtful, and endearing, as well as relevant to both children and adults.
It’s not easy to be lonely. No one likes those tiresome late night sessions where you’re slumped against the couch and enmeshed in a self-defeating cesspool of nagging and depressing thoughts, ad infinitum. “Why is everyone else but me living a fun and happy life? Where is my best friend to hang out with, to get a pizza with, to see the latest movie?
During the pandemic, loneliness became a highly discussed issue, and with good reason. It was a salient reminder that we as human beings are highly social creatures, eager to share in our inner and outward experiences. It isn’t much fun to travel the road of life in solo fashion; so when opportunities for such vital connections are severed, we just don’t feel right.
Though the social distancing days of the pandemic are now over, there remains a palpable feeling that we’re becoming ever more disconnected from each other in ways that are profound and hard to overlook. The recent wave of artificial intelligence and social technology doesn’t seem to be doing us any favors.
Sure, we can engage in all kinds of “interactions,” and we can do so with minimal effort. We can converse with people online who we’ll never see or ever really know anything about. We can send message after message (or funny cat meme after funny cat meme) to people we’re ostensibly close to but rarely ever see in person. We can partake in conversations with various chatbots that are powered by gargantuan large language models which are put out by the largest tech companies on planet Earth.
We have options, sure enough.
But deep down, it seems evident enough that this sort of cheap social fabric isn’t going to cut it if we want to foster genuinely meaningful lives in the years and decades to come.
Thankfully, storytelling remains a powerful mechanism to think about, and just within the last handful of years there have been some genuinely touching films that explore themes of community and meaning, friendship and joy, empathy and connection.
In 2021, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On stepped on the scene. It’s about an adorable shell named Marcel who, one frantic morning, discovers his entire family has vanished. Ever since that fateful day, he’s not been the same. How could he be? Separated from his community of shells, he’s been cut off from a vital part of his identity.
In 2022, Brian and Charles was released. Set in the rainy environment of Wales, it features Brian, a passionate and quirky—albeit lonely and clumsy—inventor. He manages to create a robot who names itself Charles Petrescu, and a friendship ensues. But can the artificially constructed Charles really give Brian what he’s longing for?
And then there’s Robot Dreams, which came out in 2023. Like the previous two films, it tackles themes of friendship and connection, empathy and belonging. But perhaps more than anything it’s about the unpredictability of life, of unforeseen circumstances and about dealing with factors that are largely out of our control. It also seems to touch upon themes of personal identity and how we do (or do not) remain the same individual over time.
In philosophy, there’s a famous puzzle relating to Theseus’s ship. If every board on the ship is eventually replaced with another, then no matter how closely the resulting ship might mirror the original, is it still the same ship? By extension, are each of us—as our skin cells change, our memories come and go and evolve—still the same person as we continue through time?
There’s no dialogue in the Robot Dreams. If that sounds like a reason to skip it from the outset, watch at least the first fifteen minutes. You’ll be hooked. It’s filled with simply drawn but animated characters, amazing music, and plenty of entertaining visuals. The film’s only turn off is its unnecessarily long runtime at one hour and forty three minute run time. As cute and entertaining as the majority of the scenes are, it’s far too long.
Part of that might be because the team of creative talent was having so much fun. The animated film, directed by Pablo Berger and based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, is set in 1980’s Manhattan and features eye-popping, fantastic detail. There are gorgeously crafted cityscapes, silly creatures (like a subway drumming octopus), and nostalgic objects of lava lamps and rotary phones.
The joint protagonist of Robot Dreams is DOG. He’s a lonely critter, and as he sits alone in his apartment one night, he comes across a commercial for a robot: the Amica 2000! The machine arrives the next day, DOG lovingly assembles it, and before long he and ROBOT are best friends.
But on a fateful date at the beach late in the season, DOG and ROBOT are ultimately separated. Months go by; seasons pass. DOG even befriends a Duck in the park on a windy day of flying kites. ROBOT remains in his mind, but neither he nor DOG are the same individuals when they first met. If they ever get the chance to reunite, what will it be like? What will it mean?
Robot Dreams is a playful yet thoughtful examination of friendship, identity, and what it means to experience the unpredictable nature of life.
Spectatio 
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