Although stunning to look at, the story of Robots is "as mechanical as the protagonists". Ewan McGregor employs his dodgy American accent to voice an idealistic young bot who seeks his fortune in the big city. With a lack of compelling characters, Fox Animation showed that it has a long way to catch up with the likes of Pixar but director Chris Wedge and co still managed to notch up around $130m in ticket sales.

Discontinued Parts

Wedge gives an optional commentary for three deleted scenes (two of which are not fully animated) but is curiously absent for the main feature. Perhaps that's got something to do with his admission that, "We really didn't give ourselves enough time to discover the story before we started production unfortunately." Still, for those who marvelled at ambitious sequences, like Rodney's trip on the cross-town express, the technical bods give an enlightening feature commentary, explaining how they got to grips with complicated geometry to achieve "a constantly moving city".

Hear from the cast in The Voices Of Robots featurette, but don't expect too much in the way of searing insights. That is except for Jim Broadbent, who reveals that he was persuaded to voice a female character (Madame Gasket) only after producers sent him an animated short with dialogue lifted from his scenes as the dastardly Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge. For a look at the evolution of the characters from sketch to screen, Meet The Robots provides comprehensive interactive galleries and CG turnarounds for each of the key characters.

Automated Service

Other interactive features include Robot Dance, showcasing a repertoire of crazy machine moves sure to keep the kids amused (even John Travolta couldn't pull off flashy routines like the "Oil Spill" and "Disco Lights"). Meanwhile, older kids can test their memory banks in the Fender Photo Shoot game. Capping things off is an animated short starring Aunt Fanny (Jennifer Coolidge), but sadly this five-minute skit manages to be just as muddled as the main feature.

An enticing sneak peek at Ice Age 2 is thrown in for good measure, but the irony is that this featurette has better behind-the-scenes access than the featurette for Robots. It's a fun package and the commentaries are revealing, but this DVD is otherwise short on nuts-and-bolts info.

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