REVIEWED - ROBOTS: Though it breaks no new ground, Robots is a consistently charming animated fantasy, writes Donald Clarke

IN THE wake of The Incredibles, almost any computer-generated movie is going to look like the work of Neanderthals and, sure enough, the second feature from Fox's Blue Sky division, arriving here three years after the same directors' drab Ice Age, will do little to dent the confidence of the boys at Pixar. That said, Robots is a consistently charming piece of work which, unlike the ugly, cynical Shark Tale, locates a tone - wry, screwball, ever-so-slightly scatological - perfectly modulated to entertain both infants and those who earn the money to pay for the tickets.

Given computer animators' constant search for hard, shiny protagonists suitable for their cold art, it is surprising it has taken so long for the profession to get around to casting a feature film with robots. Apparently imagined by science fiction brains from an earlier era, this lively, if thinly plotted, picture brings us among clunky, inefficient mechanical beings, thrown together from cogs, pulleys and rusty springs.

Rodney Copperbottom (voiced by Ewan McGregor) is assembled in suburban Rivet City, where his father (Stanley Tucci) works as a dishwasher at a very greasy spoon. But Rodney has ambitions to flee his hometown and become an inventor.

This being the sort of film where the hero is urged to live his dream so frequently you end up longing to see him fail, young Copperbottom is eventually persuaded to make his way to Robot City - Lang's Metropolis redrawn by William Heath Robinson - and present himself before the benign industrialist Big Weld (Mel Brooks). Sadly the suave, stainless steel Phineas T Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) has since taken over Big Weld Inc, and the conglomerate has - unlike News International or any of the other cuddly organisations affiliated with 20th Century Fox - become a rapacious devourer of souls.

Though the action sequences go on too long and the inevitable musical finale is just as lazy and unimaginative as those in Shrek 2 and Shark Tale, Robots features cracking one-liners throughout and rarely drifts into sentimentality. The visuals are never exactly breathtaking, but there are several fine set pieces, notably the appearance of Ratchet's evil mother, who, her face all mechanical bits and pieces, could have been designed by the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer.

But perhaps the film's greatest achievement is to offer us a - somewhat improvised, I would guess - vocal performance by Robin Williams that never quite sets your teeth on edge.