Friday 4 November 2016

The Killer Robots! Crash and Burn (2016)



Apparently "The Killer Robots!" are a Florida-based "theatrical rock band", who take the stage dressed as ... well, as Killer Robots ... and who produce a variety of multimedia materials that encapsulate their passion for both music and science fiction.  I didn't know any of this when I impulse-bought this film from Google Play, but I did know it by the time I got around to actually watching the film.

The film begins with a group of robots press-ganged into fighting in gladiatorial battles.  They prove much tougher than the arena owners expect, however, and destroy three monstrous opponents before attempting to escape.

Said attempt ultimately ends in their own destruction, and if this had just been a short film that ended there, I'd probably have given it a qualified recommendation for its manic energy and memorable (if uneven) visual design and special effects.

However, that's only "chapter one", and the film continues for a good many chapters more.  The robots are rebuilt in part two, and tasked with a mission: they must travel to a distant world with a cure for the terrible virus that has swept the population.  That's a computer virus, of course, since said population is also robots.  Unfortunately, the virus also causes everyone infected by it to become homicidal, and there's also a bad guy chasing them for not terribly well-explained reasons, so the task is not an easy one.

This film is pretty much all about the cheap-but-often-interesting visual design and the goofy humour, with the plot being very much a secondary concern.  That steadily becomes more and more of a weakness the longer the movie continues.

So overall, I'd have to say skip the film, and maybe just watch the trailer, which packs in pretty much all of the movie's selling points in a handy two-and-a-half minute bundle.




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