The 2007 robot spectacle: 144 minutes of chrome, sparks, and a camera allergic to standing still. For once the dossiers aligned perfectly — Matt found no practical soul to defend, Norm found no plot to audit — and the site logged its cleanest double-down ever. The Hall of Shame dusted a plinth. Then Management overturned it, on grounds the critics describe as 'legally creative' and the ruling describes as 'obvious.' The Hall of Shame's all-time record now stands at zero for five. The critics have moved past anger into a dignified, wounded silence, which lasted eleven minutes.
I came in wanting to find the thing I could defend — I always do, it’s my whole file. Practical effects? The robots are pixels wearing car parts. Character? The lead has one, briefly, before the movie trades him to the Pentagon. Spectacle discipline? The action is cut like a paint-shaker: I watched two twenty-story robots wrestle for a full minute and could not tell you which one was winning, or, at several points, which one was WHICH.
“There’s a version of this movie about a boy whose first car is secretly alive, and for about forty minutes you can see it — sweet, funny, actually shot in focus. Then the military-industrial complex arrives with a hundred more robots and eats it.”
I don’t enjoy unanimous verdicts — they’re bad for the feud and worse for my brand. But my colleague and I looked at the same 144 minutes and reached the same floor. That should tell you something. Thumb down, no asterisk, and for once the drawer where I keep my defenses stays shut.
The audit was brief. Runtime: 144 minutes — a 36-minute overage, invoiced in full, itemized under three headings: robots fighting, robots preparing to fight, and a full government subplot whose contribution to the plot is a hallway. Story: a MacGuffin cube that does whatever the current scene requires, pursued by factions distinguishable only by paint. The camera is in a centrifuge. The editing appears to have been performed during an earthquake, possibly as a safety drill.
“For once, the second floor is unanimous. No split, no crossfire, no appeal. Just two professionals, one verdict, and the sound of the Hall of Shame finally warming up a plinth.”
I’ll enter the concession fairly: the first act — kid, car, eBay subplot — is nimbler and funnier than it has any right to be, and if the film had stayed that size, we’d be litigating a split right now. It didn’t. It became weather. Thumb down, with enthusiasm, invoice attached, and I want the induction ceremony photographed for the ledger. What could possibly — the elevator. THE ELEVATOR.
Overturned, and before the second floor stages a walkout, hear the grounds. Strip the franchise cynicism and look at the first hour, which nobody downstairs will admit they enjoyed: a MYSTERY. Strange signals, a haunted car, a government cover-up, a kid piecing together why his Camaro drives itself at night — that's a boy-and-his-monster concealment thriller, and this court has ratified that exact structure twice this month. The film is also, and I say this as a finding of fact, FUNNY — deliberately, dryly, at the expense of its own premise, which is more self-awareness than half the prestige pictures on this ledger. Does the third act dissolve into a chrome hurricane? It does, and the invoice for that portion is fair. But we do not convict a whole film for its worst hour when its best hour is doing honest genre work. Overturned. The Hall keeps waiting. I'm told there's a chart about me now. Add this to it.