Starring: Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Mel Brooks (I), Robin Williams (I)

5 out of 10

Robin Williams has become the Phil Collins, the Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, of family films. He's been over-exposed and he's worn out his welcome.

And he wears it down to the tread in Robots, an otherwise visually engaging film, which gets sidetracked by his goofy shtick, and never regains the element of wonder it had before he shows up.

And up until then Robots runs just fine. It has a lovely palette and some surprisingly tender moments. It's initially an inventive eyeful with so much going on you'll have to placate yourself with the knowledge that half a year or so from now you'll be able to pause it on DVD to catch all the background visual puns, inside jokes, and gags. But the Rube Goldberg cleverness of the first act is replaced with tired ass and fart jokes, courtesy largely of Mr. Williams vocal riffs. Rather than supplying the most animated thing about the film, which is putatively his job, he provides the most static element.

The film starts with Herb Copperbottom (voice of Stanley Tucci), a former musician who is now a dishwasher, who is expecting a child with his wife, Mrs. Copperbottom (voice of Diane Wiest). The blessed event occurs when their new baby robot is delivered unassembled and Herb gets to work putting it together. Their child Rodney is an inventor and he's inspired by Bigweld (Mel Brooks), the owner of Bigweld Industries, who lives in RobotCity. On "The Big Weld Show" he exhorts kids to be the best they can be, which gives Rodney big dreams about his future, even though Herb Copperbottom doesn't bring home much on a dishwasher's salary and Rodney gets hand-me-down parts. Unlike his dad, who didn't get to realize his aspirations, Rodney wants to go places.

Soon, Rodney (Ewan McGregor) is ready to leave his small town and make his mark in RobotCity. Once there, however, he discovers the doors to Bigweld Industries shut tight (with a very funny sentry, a sock puppet with the voice of Paul Giamatti) and Bigweld himself to be an inaccessible recluse. In his place is Ratchet (Greg Kinnear), a scheming, money-grubbing robot who want to dispense with the old way of fixing robots with piecemeal parts by having the whole carriage replaced with shiny, new, expensive upgrades.

Dejected, Rodney finds himself mixed up with the Rusties, the lower-class robots who depend on spare parts for their very lives. They're led by Fender (Robin Williams), who lives with Aunty Fanny (Jennifer Coolidge)--the wellspring of the tedious rump jokes, his little sister Piper (Amanda Bynes) and an assortment of other misfits.

They discover that Ratchet is getting the material for the new upgrades by melting down the outdated models and their parts all of which is done by his mother, Madam Gasket (Jim Broadbent).

The look of this film, the colors used, the "texture," if you will, are all advances on those previously used by director Chris Wedge, Blue Sky (the production studio), and Fox (the releasing studio). They were responsible for Ice Age, though that film had much more heart and integrity than this. Pop culture references seem obligatory in these second-tier films nowadays and there's enough here to make you wish there weren't (a guest list of celebrities at the Bigweld Ball includes Britney Gears. Get it? Britney Gears. Har har). It's not the kind of repetitive chum of Shark's Tale though, let's not go that far. Shark's Tale was like looking at an issue of US magazine submerged in a salt-water tank, Robots is like Junior Popular Mechanics.

No, Robots is more like Aladdin, without the music. In the place of Alan Menken tunes are armpit fart jokes, which, unless they occur in cabin #16 at camp, and you're eleven, doesn't really qualify as humor.

But that's Robin Williams's specialty these days. The guys is funny live, no question, but his performance as Bender has inspired the worst in the Blue Sky animators. Fender is just a laugh track, pre-canned and lifeless.

That brings up the vocal stylings of Halle Berry There's still the unanswered question of why they needed Halle Berry to provide the voice of Cappy, or Amanda Bynes as Piper, for that matter. Can we stop with the celebrity voice gimmick? Star-infused voice-overs only seem to impress the guys in the booths laying down the tracks and it has to be expensive. Sure it must be fun to have Michelle Pfeiffer, Brad Pitt, Renee Zellweger or Angelina Jolie show up in sweats for a few weeks or months and emote, but it doesn't matter once the film starts (and, as Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas proved it doesn't matter beforehand much either). Who was the voice of Mr. Incredible? Craig T. Nelson.

And invoking the Pixar/Disney film brings up the very odd parallels between Bigweld and Walt Disney. "The Big Weld Show," which leaves young Rodney wide-eyed, is a thinly veiled Wonderful World of Disney, beamed into the homes of millions and firing the imagination of children everywhere. Bigweld's dream business, including a magical kingdom, turns into a manufacturing nightmare, churning out meaningless shells. The board room is run by a ruthless dictator who expunges his enemies for even piping up against him, a la Michael Eisner. The Happy Kingdom turns into the MBA's playground.

Like Dante, who stuck his foes in the lowest levels of his "Inferno," animators populate their villain hell with their enemies (think Prince Farquaad from Shrek, also supposed to be Eisner).

Can I put in a vote to sentence Robin Williams there?