In the near future, Frank is a retired robber occasionally suffering from dementia. After a divorce, he lives alone in a desolate house and sometimes flirts with Jennifer who works in a nearby library. His son Hunter, who works and lives in the city, buys him a disability robot in order to help Frank about his daily chores. Frank resents this, but quickly finds good use of the robot in robbing the library. They then rob the neighbor's house, snatching diamonds from an arogant 'yuppie'. Frank meets Jennifer once again, and then remembers she is actually his ex-wife. Hunter and the police want to scan the robot's memory in order to find evidence that Frank robbed the house, so Frank erases the robot's memory. Frank is ultimately sent to a retirement home.
The director Jake Schreier's feature length debut film, "Robot & Frank" is a very accessible and fluent little film about the inevitable loss during aging, a light version of "Umberto D.", though with an interesting Sci-Fi take on it. It lacks more inspiration or ingenuity, but compensates this through Frank Langella's wonderful performance, to whom it owes a lot of its identity. Balancing between comedy and tragedy, "Robot & Frank" is sometimes thin, yet mostly charming, without turning too melodramatic when addressing some more "touchy" themes such as dementia (the neat twist about Frank's ex-wife near the end) and helplessness during old age. Also, when it puts some effort into it, it can come up with a few juicy comical dialogues, such as the opening exchange between the robot and the cynical Frank: "Hello, Frank. It is a pleasure to meet you!" - "How do you know!?"
Grade:++
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