Robot Dreams
Neon | Release Date: November 22, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonJun 11, 2024
Robot Dreams reminds us that animated feature doesn’t mean “movie for kids.” Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJun 5, 2024
Watching Robot Dreams, we find ourselves reflecting on how our own lives have changed as we’ve grown: the friends we’ve left behind but haven’t forgotten, the cities that have transformed around us, the wisdom we’ve accrued, and all the ways in which we’re still slightly damaged from all that living. Read full review
100
Original-CinKaren GordonJun 5, 2024
It’s a wistful, beautiful, and tender movie that works across generations, yet another feat accomplished. It's not just clever storytelling, dammit! There’s heart and magic at work here. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearMay 31, 2024
To call it the best animated film of the last few years is to undervalue it. Berger’s take on this graphic novel is both a high point of the medium and a reminder of why we go to the movies in the first place. It’s a film lover’s dream come true. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMay 29, 2024
[Berger] honors the animation medium by investing it with a full range of feeling – just as if he were making a movie with real people. This is another way of saying that “Robot Dreams” is a film for adults perhaps even more than for children. I Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMar 29, 2024
Romance and cinema are ideal bedfellows for all sorts of obvious reasons, but on screen, the beauty of friendship can be harder to pin down. This wise and wondrous (and wordless) animation does it better than any other film in recent memory – and in ways a six-year-old could effortlessly grasp. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeMar 25, 2024
There’s such tenderness to the storytelling, such empathy and emotional depth, that it broadens the film’s potential audience from kids, who will respond to the cute characters and gentle wit, to adolescents and adults, who will recognise the angst and awkwardness of trying to function alone once again. Read full review
100
EmpireHelen O'HaraMar 19, 2024
Who needs humans? This is visual storytelling at its finest, a traditional animation of gentle, unshowy genius. Sometimes the very best love stories go deeper than words can say. Read full review
100
IndieWireCarlos AguilarMay 23, 2023
With its soulful tin heart, Robot Dreams moves us to appreciate the fortune of having a precious pal. Whether for a season or a lifetime. Read full review
91
The PlaylistRobert DanielsMay 23, 2023
Its radical sweetness arises from a wellspring of empathy. Its radiant colors and lucid conception of vulnerability in the face of a largely inconsiderate world, sink deep beneath the skin in the liminal space between the soul and the heart that can make animation such a wondrous medium. Berger’s “Robot Dreams” is its stunning reality. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekJun 3, 2024
This is a movie that feels, in the best way, like the last day of summer: radiant, bittersweet, redolent of memories in the making. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAmy NicholsonMay 30, 2024
To describe the plot — a dog and a robot are best friends, until they aren’t — the film sounds pitifully small. But the world inside it feels huge, a sprawling landscape of joy and heartbreak and mixed emotions and stinging dead ends. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesJun 13, 2024
It leaves a lot of room for interpretation – depending on how you come to it, you could read Dog and Robot’s relationship as platonic or romantic, straight or queer – but the takeaway is all tenderness. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleMay 29, 2024
To a remarkable degree, “Robot Dreams” has fully imbibed all the melancholy and joy of Earth, Wind & Fire’s disco classic. Just as the song asks “Do you remember?” so too does “Robot Dreams,” a sweetly wistful little movie that, like a good pop song, expresses something profound without wasting a word. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineRob HumanickMay 28, 2024
Pablo Berger's film effortlessly brings a sense of universality to its story. Read full review
88
TheWrapTomris LafflyMay 29, 2023
Robot Dreams—as much a movie about coupledom as it is about friendship—sneaks up on you with an ending that both eulogizes the ones that got away and celebrates the memories that they had left behind. Read full review
85
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJun 6, 2024
Simply but smoothly animated, and featuring no dialogue whatsoever, director Pablo Berger’s film is a charming fable that rides the line between sentimentality and schmaltz just right. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubMatt SchimkowitzMay 30, 2024
With Robot Dreams, Pablo Berger has crafted an aesthetically gentle but emotionally hardened New York City. Operating under the belief that there is little one can control in a city of that size, Berger allows his film to take flights of fancy that loop around back to companionship. Read full review
83
The Film StageJohn FinkNov 13, 2023
Robot Dreams is one of the best films of the year, animated or otherwise. Read full review
80
Screen RantAlex HarrisonMay 30, 2024
The characters are animated with such clarity of expression, and the film is edited so expertly, that lines just aren't necessary. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesMar 25, 2024
The drifty, dream-punctuated second half might puzzle younger kids, though its universal themes and visual gags are perfectly all-ages appropriate. As is the film’s sweet, un-snarky tone, free from sly Futurama satire or Bojack Horseman raunch. Read full review
80
Little White LiesMichael LeaderMar 21, 2024
Robot Dreams is Berger’s first fling with animation, and he takes to the new artform with evident and infectious enthusiasm. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenOct 16, 2023
Berger doesn’t make concessions for the easily teary: Robot Dreams is a film as much about separation as togetherness. But while the final reel is a low-key heartbreaker, the bubble never pops on the loveliness of what came before. Read full review
80
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 23, 2023
Robot Dreams may be sentimental, but it is also wise, resisting the urge to craft the sort of crowd-pleasing happy ending one might expect. Rather, Berger goes for something truer. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoMay 31, 2024
Pablo Berger’s “Robot Dreams” is a lovely fable about partnership and imagination, a movie that uses the form of animated cinema to tell a story in a way that couldn’t be possible in any other medium. Read full review
70
ColliderChase HutchinsonJun 10, 2024
Robot Dreams is a beautifully animated look at life, friendship, and what it means to grow apart. Read full review
70
VarietyGuy LodgeJan 5, 2024
Above all else, Berger’s film delights in the kind of eccentric, incidental sights and sounds from which dreams — human, animal or android — can spring. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesJun 7, 2024
It’s a feel-good fable of companionship that is just a little too simple, in both its sadness and its sweetness. Read full review
60
The GuardianCath ClarkeMar 21, 2024
This is a sweet, fuzzy movie, possibly a little soft-hearted. Still, I dare anyone to watch the final moments without a lump in the throat. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 23, 2023
The use of music and sound design is very thoughtful throughout, capturing the way music by street performers makes life in the city feel like a musical all the time while the murmur of traffic and general hubbub creates its own atonal backing track. Read full review
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