ROBOT DREAMS is a lovely and lyrical 2023 animated film from Spain. It has no dialogue, but English signage because it’s set in New York City. It’s some time in the ‘80s and there are no humans, only animals living like humans (in apartments, wearing clothes, having jobs). Nothing too deep, just a cartooning conceit we can easily accept, with the occasional joke like when the main character Dog is reading Pet Sematary and we have to wonder what the hell that book is in this world. The animals seem to have achieved all the same things as human civilization: the Twin Towers, pizza delivery, ALF, “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, you name it.

Dog lives alone in an apartment in the East Village. He’s lonely and bored of playing Pong by himself and sees an ad on late night TV about ordering a robot friend. It arrives in the mail and he builds it and they walk around holding hands and having a great time together all summer. Robot is very friendly and open to learning – he waves back at a baby, flips off back at some punk rockers, does his best to join in.

But after a fun day on the beach in Coney Island Robot gets stiff and can’t stand up anymore, and he’s too heavy for Dog to carry. So Dog goes to Strand bookstore to buy used books on robot repair, gets his toolbox, comes back to save Robot… and the beach is closed for the season, locked off until June 1st. He tries different avenues to get through the gate, both legal and illegal, but is denied, even jailed. So it becomes a story about Dog trying to get by until June and Robot laying on the beach.

Throughout the movie we pass through all the seasons, occasionally with time lapse, mostly with other signposts. Trick-or-treaters arrive, the Christmas tree comes out, it snows, the snow melts. In between are the titular robot dreams: Robot imagining escaping and returning to Dog, Dog fantasizing about his lost friend. Then he starts trying to find other ways to fill that emptiness. There’s a pretty long scene detailing him looking for a kite to buy in Chinatown, seemingly a small thing except flying it leads to meeting a new girlfriend (which itself leads to heartbreak). I guess life is different things leading to different things.

At the heart of this story are familiar emotions, many beginning with the letter L, like loneliness, longing, and love. And surrounding the heart is life itself, depicted through the sophisticated language of lines filled in with colors. When the movie started it seemed like just some cute doodles, but I quickly realized I was being immersed in an immensely detailed world – a beautiful combination of simplicity and fastidiousness. Robot’s head takes five seconds to draw, nothing but a dome, two circles with dots in them and a an oval for a mouth. But also when Dog draws that face on a bus window with his finger, the condensation drips. These characters made of simple shapes live in a world with refrigerator magnets, junk drawers, litter, graffiti, flyers for drum school with tear off phone numbers, garages cluttered with golf clubs, an old keyboard, a box of Christmas ornaments. And we see this life filled with these things from imaginative angles, with subtle lighting techniques achieved through color, all of this coming from observation of the real world.

This animal NYC is so packed with true-to-life particulars that it feels in some way more accurate to me than many live action films. It helps that they chose/were allowed to use real brand names and logos: Cheetos, Joy, MTV, Tab, Doublemint, Weekly World News, Tropicana, Heinz, U Haul. Fake brands in a cartoon can be great but it adds something when the rental of THE WIZARD OF OZ says Kim’s Video on the case and when Robot guzzles a bottle with the STP logo on it, not just “OIL.”

I love seeing all the coffee shops, pawn shops and graffitied walls in the background. I was surprised not to notice any movie theater marquees. Maybe I missed them, or maybe it’s just not the right neighborhood for that. But like any great cartooning there’s plenty to notice in the backgrounds or margins, like the curious pigeons gathering on the windowsill as Dog assembles Robot, the boar dancing as he washes his car, the class on a field trip at Central Park. I noticed the Keith Haring mural, the Guardian Angel leopard and fox in the subway station, the lion carrying home a Basquiat painting, the pig in the paddleboat with the tank top sunburn, the bear wearing an army jacket over a hoodie collecting cans. I noticed the humble belongings in Dog’s apartment: a shelf of puzzles and photo albums, a tape collection, a Pink Floyd poster, and regular apartment living items like the dish rack.

There are lots of movie references, mostly nothing fancy, but my two favorites are when an animal equivalent of Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee’s character in SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT) is on the subway and when they’re on the beach and it does the famous JAWS dolly zoom. The virtual cinematography never stopped impressing me. You draw characters like this straight on and it’s one thing, but if we’re seeing them from inside a box on the floor, or looking down from a street light, or through a window from inside a laundromat, a barbershop, a bakery, a psychic’s place, a Chinese restaurant – then we get a different idea of their lives. We watch Dog’s bored face from inside the microwave as his Banquet frozen macaroni dinner bubbles and splatters a little glob of cheese on the glass. Occasionally there’s a show-offy Tsui Hark type shots like when Dog is assembling Robot and we’re looking out the legholes as he attaches the legs.

I’m only describing visuals, but music is crucial to the movie too, from the jazzy, mostly piano score by Alfonso de Vilallonga (TRANSSIBERIAN), to the bucket drummer in the subway, to various styles heard on boomboxes, to the aforementioned “September,” which is as important as “P.I.M.P.” was to ANATOMY OF A FALL. Dog and Robot rollerskate to it in Central Park and we know Robot continues thinking of him because he’ll whistle it in his weird electronic warble.

The story, like the art, seems cute and minimalistic at a glance, but is effortlessly flowing with relatable meaning. (ending spoilers) Robot being rebuilt with a boombox for a chest makes him a different person but also calls back to the time he spent with Dog. In the end they’re both very changed and miss each other and are heartbroken but also excited to move forward with the new relationships and circumstances they’re in. It’s happy and sad and true.

I was aware of ROBOT DREAMS because last year it was the only movie nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar that I hadn’t seen, but it wasn’t at all available in the U.S. at that time. I remembered it as I was reviewing THE WILD ROBOT and TRANSFORMERS ONE and then Fred Topel encouraged me to see it, which sealed the deal. Thanks Fred. Now having seen it points me toward other things I should remember to look into: the cartooning of Sara Varon, whose graphic novel it’s based on, and the other films by director Pablo Berger. I had heard of BLANCANIEVES, a 2012 silent film based on Snow White, which is probly what I’m most likely to check out next. ROBOT DREAMS is his fourth film, but his first foray into animation. According to IMDb the animation director is Benoît Féroumont, who was a lead animator on THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE and animation supervisor on THE SECRET OF KELLS.

Berger gets around. In 1988 he made a short film called Mama that’s also Alex de la Iglesia’s first credit (as art director). Then he went and got a Ph.D., worked as a professor at the New York Film Academy, a publicist, and a music producer before he started directing feature films. I was not surprised to see that he and his producer/life partner Yuko Harami lived in New York for ten years, and that Dog’s apartment is based on theirs. I don’t think this would be possible otherwise. Draw what you know, except with animals, I believe is the adage. In this case the result was a perfect movie.