CODY THE ROBOSAPIEN/ ROBOSAPIEN REBOOTED
US, 2013, 86 minutes, Colour.
Penelope Ann Miller, David Eigenberg, Bobby Coleman, Kim Coates, Joaquim de Almeida, Jae Head, Holliston Coleman.
Directed by Sean McNamara.
This is an entertaining fantasy for a family audience, especially for younger children, especially for boys. However, action is fast-paced, there are many comic touches, so that teenagers watching might be entertained as well – and even the parents might enjoy it!.
Underlying the family issues is the familiar one of inventions, idealistic inventors, inventions that will help the human race, but all the time in the background, sinister and ambitious corporation heads, exploiting inventions for the military, the inventions as weapons, ‘search and destroy’ rather than ‘search and assist’.
While this comes to the fore early in the film, with an ambitious businessman wanting a demonstration of the Robosapien to see its weaponry power (it plants a bomb on a ship and blows it up), the inventor and his invention escape. While the Robosapien is pursued, the main part of the film shows the very genial Robosapien, fleeing, in a garbage dumpster, encountering Henry, a precocious young science student who has won an award but is bullied and also finishes in the dumpster. Henry is able to fix the Robosapien, calling him Cody, is quickly discovered by the rest of the family but immediately and genially. And the same happens at school. The setting is New Orleans where everybody seems to be very agreeable in discovering the robot amongst them.
So, plenty of domestic comedy, plenty of school comedy, Cody performing all kinds of gymnastics, dancing, basketball hoops, injuring himself to everyone.
Meanwhile, the inventor, Eric (David Eichenberger) is able to track down Cody, engage with the family (mother, Penelope Ann Miller, is separated from husband who seems to have been a failure as a father), with the snooty sister who changes her snooty attitudes (played by Holliston Coleman, the older sister of Bobby Coleman who plays Henry).
Which, of course, leads to a huge confrontation, back to the laboratories, threats to the family as hostages, but, of course, Cody winning the day and the corporation boss and the big businessman wanting a demonstration arrested and taken away. Cody is very smart insofar as he can command the huge phalanx of copies of the Robosapien to do what he wants – that they fight and destroy each other!
The film was made by Sean Mc Namara, director of many family-oriented films over the decades, with the faith-based film, Soul Surfer, as well as the historical The King’s Daughter.
