Trailer
Plot summary
In the near future, Frank Weld is an aging ex-convict and thief who lives alone and whose memory is failing. His son Hunter, an attorney with children of his own, grows tired of the weekly visits and buys his father a robot companion programmed to keep him on a fixed daily routine and to occupy him with tasks such as gardening. Frank is wary at first, then warms to the machine when he learns it draws no line between legal activity and crime and will help him pick locks.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Robot & Frank (2012)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Frank's robot companion was built to imitate the look of real Japanese caretaker robots, and its design had to include enough room for a human performer, dancer Rachael Ma, to physically operate it from inside the suit.
- Filming took place during a hot upstate New York summer, and the heat inside the robot suit was so severe for performer Rachael Ma that she had to be swapped out for another actress, Dana Morgan, for two full days of shooting.
- The robot's spoken lines were originally meant to be delivered live by suit performer Rachael Ma, but doing the physical movement and the voice work at the same time proved impossible, so the job was handed instead to Frank Langella's own nephew, who happened to be working on the crew as a production assistant.
- The film was the first feature for both director Jake Schreier and writer Christopher D. Ford, and it won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in a tie with the Kashmiri film Valley of Saints.
