Mike McCahill 

Robot Overlords review – spirited sci-fi with Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley

It may lack the power of US competitors, but Jon Wright’s follow-up to Grabbers is amiable and nonconformist
  
  

Robot Overlords
JJ Abrams crossed with Children’s Film Foundation … Robot Overlords. Photograph: PR

Jon Wright follows his enjoyable Irish monster movie Grabbers with what looks like a Children’s Film Foundation offering updated for the JJ Abrams era: we now get better VFX, lashings of lens flare and Roy Hudd as a kindly grandpa. The battlelines between the robots oppressing a Manx backwater and school marm Gillian Anderson’s rebellious charges are economically established; only during the second-act runaround does it seem a little underpowered when set against its American competition. Still, it’s brisk enough, and Wright’s fondness for types sustains it: there are well-judged contributions from Ben Kingsley as a snippy collaborator, and Tamer Hassan as the guvnor of a pub in permanent lockdown. The film is never less than amiable, and rather more spirited and nonconformist than the Transformers movies: the strategic deployment of a second world war Spitfire suggests this one may hold symbolic value for our newly confident industry.

 

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