Review of The Movie Robot & Frank

Robot & Frank is a movie about an old retired man name Frank. He is in his early stages of dementia and lives alone in his house. The film is set in the near future where people use technology on a daily basis to help them with the daily tasks.

Frank has two children Hunter and Madison, who live on their own with their family but also keep a check on Frank. Hunter brings him a white tall robot to take full care of his father. Although, Frank is able to do everything himself like walking to the library, eating but he’s starting to forget things. The robot does all the chores around the house such as, cooking, cleaning, and sets a routine schedule for Frank. It also takes him for walks and tries to build his interest in gardening as it would keep Frank busy. At first, Frank doesn’t like the robot too much as he thinks he doesn’t need it and feels uncomfortable. Later, he realizes how he can use this robot for some useful tasks. He trains his robot end up stealing jewels as Frank has a habit of shoplifting. The police get suspicious and starts monitoring Frank. Franks has to erase robot’s memory in order to save himself from going to jail. The movie ends when Frank is living in a nursing home. He’s not able to recognize anyone and leaves a note for Hunter to check the robot’s garden.

The most interesting part of the film is when the robot meets Frank for the first time. I enjoyed watching how friendship grows between a human and a machine throughout the film. It made me believe that humans and robots could be friends forever. I really liked how the robot kept covering up for Frank. He kept asking Frank to erase his memory, so he doesn’t have to go to jail. Lastly, the part where Frank takes his son’s car, the robot and runs away. At the end, it was sad how he didn’t have the robot anymore and really missed him. The movie relates to some of the topics we have covered in class. For example, the different types of robots, and the idea of having a smart home.

The film shows how robots interact with humans and take care of them however, the robots, we have learned about in our course from chapter three were only programmed to do the basic everyday tasks. For example, the industrial robots, personal robots, entertaining and monitoring robots. These robots were created to care for the elders. One of the robots that relates to Frank’s robot is ASIMO from chapter 3. He looks similar to Frank’s robot and helps assist individuals with various tasks. Pearl and Care-O-Bot would also describe Frank’s robot since they were designed to assist elders in maintaining their independent living. Pearl included an elder reminder whereas, the Care-O-bot could be controlled through simple verbal commands. It can navigate through the environment via cameras and sensors. All these robots don’t have feelings or a mindset of their own and only have limited information. Although, people would be more interested in having robots that interact like humans do, unfortunately, we do not have that advanced technology. As far as the idea of having a smart home, we see Frank has a smart device in his house which is being able to communicate with his children through a tv and his cellphone shown as very advanced.

Overall the movie did great at showing the use of technology and how much of a help it can be for humans. Some technology gave the impression of being unrealistic and too advanced, but it is in the near future so it’s possible. The movie was very interesting to watch and informative for people who might be interested in getting a robot for themselves later in life.