Readers, I welled up! At a cartoon! Robot Dreams reviewed

Robot Dreams is an animated film from the Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger and while it doesn’t have the production values of something by Pixar or Disney or DreamWorks, it will capture your heart. Sweet, charming, deeply moving…. Readers, I welled up! At a cartoon! This is something we need never speak of again.

It is based on the graphic novel by Sara Varon and stars absolutely no one, as there are no voices to voice. There is sound but no dialogue, like Mr Bean, although the similarity ends there. It is set in the 1980s in a New York populated by anthropomorphic animals. Hail a taxi and your driver may be a Sikh elephant, or your FedEx delivery guy may be a bull, and look at this warthog washing his car while swinging his big old bottom to mambo music from the radio. It’s delightful. I want to move there.

Readers, I welled up! At a cartoon! This is something we need never speak of again

But our main character, a dog called ‘Dog’, is sad. He is lonely. Of an evening, in his apartment, Dog plays Pong against himself and microwaves a miserable TV dinner, possibly not in the manner of all lonely dogs everywhere as, in my experience, they are most likely to shred your slippers and/or raid the kitchen bin. This dog, in his quest for companionship, orders a build-your-own-robot, as seen late one night on a television infomercial. Once constructed, ‘Robot’ is affectionate, curious, kind, thrilled by everything – and devoted to Dog. They become the best of friends.

They enjoy a joyous summer together. They roller-skate in Central Park to Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘September’ (I still have the earworm). They take in the view from the top of the Empire State Building, eat hotdogs, slurp Tab, watch a VHS of the Wizard of Oz.