Cry, Robot, Cry

Today's Movie Minute is about future technology that is so advanced that robots cry. They cry rivers, buckets, gushing streams of robot tears. Why? Because we all cry, dummy. Geesh, stop being so emotionally dead. (Wait. That's me.)

Haley Joel Osment plays a child actor who will be forgotten as an adult. He's also a robot. And a crybaby.

Beyond his soft supple humanoid skin and breakfast-cereal-selling face, he cries a lot. In the credits there is someone known as EYE DEWER FOR MR. OSMENT. They were frantically lubricating this kid's eyes practically every damn frame.

Why would a robot have the ability to cry? What does it mean? Where do the tears come from? Is it because the lubrication prevents thermal breakdown and oil viscosity....?? 

"I'm dewy. And backlit, Mommy!"

Other robots are much more realistic. They provide sex. Their motto: once you go mecha you never go becha. And no doubt when they orgasm they cry copiously. (Not that I've ever done that myself... Uh, yeah.)

Speaking of sex, the Mommy character teaches Osment about threesomes with Teddy Ruxpin.

"Can you say threesome, honey? Three-some..."

Let's see, there's a plot of some kind in this interminable movie. Osment and Teddy go on a heartsmart journey to Manhattan and do the usual touristy things.

"Damnit, you blew it up! Damn you all to hell! Wait... You put it under water?! Damn you all... aw fuck it."

Along the way they have various adventures with other robots, and stuff. (Meanwhile I press the time button on my remote: what, another 48 minutes to go?! WHY DOES GOD HATE ME??!)

Wait, is that Yul Brenner under there?!

Doing its best to try our patience, the movie rolls two-thousand fucking years into the future where Osment has a close encounter with robots who tell him to call home, where some long-distance charges may apply. 

Demonstrating how schlocky and manipulative the movie is, the blue fairy from Coney Island has been underwater for centuries and then frozen in a new ice age, and yet her face is pristine and beautiful, designed to maximize cascading gushing quantities of tears from our eye jails.

"Blue Angel?! Is that Cyndi Lauper?!?"

Morgan Freeman's voice comes on to explain what just happened the last three hours, but by then our eyes are so permanently moistened we can't see the kitchen to grab the butcher knife to stab our eyes out, in a final irony that any robot would love if it could understand irony. Oh, the irony!