The bartender down at the local pizza bar had never heard of Frank Langella.
Langella has played Zorro; Sherlock Holmes; Dracula; Superman’s boss, Perry White; and a certain Richard Nixon.
Don’t let the high-profile gigs, fool you: Langella, at 74, shows himself more in command of subtlety than ever. And that’s especially important in “Robot & Frank,” because he has to hold his own against James Marsden as his son, Liv Tyler as his daughter and the titular robot, voiced by Peter Sarsgaard and performed bodily primarily by Rachael Ma and Dana Morgan. Oh, and let’s not forget Susan Sarandon.
Sarandon made a name for herself prancing around in lingerie 37 years ago in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and 37 years later, playing a librarian named Jennifer, she still looks like the kind of librarian you’d want to ask for her phone number.
Frank (Langella himself) has tried asking for her phone number a few times, and the film, directed with classy charm by Jake Schreier, implies that she’s turned him down a few times.
It’s a small town in the not-too-distant future, and Frank walks from his house into town several times a week, to clear his head and, of course, ask Jennifer for her phone number again.
The problem is, Frank’s losing track of time and place. Like older people in the here and now, he doesn’t want to be put into a home. Hence, the robot.
This brings us to what Frank used to do for a living. It isn’t strictly legal, and it involves retrieving bright and shiny things from well-hidden, well-protected caches.
The robot learns, insofar as robots can learn, that it must go along with Frank’s desires to keep Frank happy. Frank’s OK with the idea of healthier living and with the robot’s particular brand of managed care, until he figures out the robot must — and will — follow him in any endeavor.
So Frank decides to try his hand at his old trade, to keep things interesting and to win the affections of Jennifer. He’s never less-than-captivating at all of this, although once Frank wins an alliance with the robot, the only major variable left in the plot is his degree of compos mentis. He keeps you guessing on that point.
We wait for Frank to fall and not get up, but he holds cards up his figurative sleeve. And although the robot always protests that it can’t return Frank’s affection, the man grows to love the machine.
The relative wisdom of loving a machine is a labyrinthine topic. Suffice to say, Frank proves that love can grow and flourish in unlikely places.
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