Stars:
Andy Kaufman, Bernadette Peters, Kenneth McMillian, Randy Quaid.

Choice Dialogue:
* "What does a robot need with an air traffic controller's hat?"

Conclusions:
* Knock-knock jokes are lame but even worse when they are mechanized.
* Tree stumps, rabbits and skunks are a menace to society.
* Robots can be endearing but not when they creep you out.
* An android "pleasure center" involves dials and a lot of clanking.

Review:
Heart beeps. Movie thuds.

Just call it a failed experiment, one that has been tried over and over and still hasn't worked. It is the genre of movies about benevalent robots seeking a smidge of humanity through their transistors. It didn't work for Steven Spielberg in A.I., it didn't work for Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man and it certainly didn't work for Andy Kaufman (if in fact anything ever did) for the rectal thermometer of a movie he named Heartbeeps.

So why doesn't the formula work? Well, in the case of A.I. we were forced to wade through vats of Spielberg syrup to get Haley Joel Osment to The Blue Fairy even though we knew that his search was going nowhere. In the case of Bicentennial Man we are subjected to Robin Williams trying to squeeze emotions out of a character who is, we know, just mimicking a good beside manner. The problem with Heartbeeps is that nothing much happens. I also think the problem is that all three movies try to graft human emotion onto characters that have none and therefore we know that we are looking at the facade of emotions and nothing genuine.

My problem with Heartbeeps actually goes much deeper. To put it mildly, the characters are creepy, real creepy, Poltergeist clown creepy. The Oscar nominated make-up by Stan Winston is quite good but it gives you the same kind of chill that you might get from a grinning doll. You know, the kind of doll that makes you constantly check around the doorway to make sure that it hasn't creeped into the kitchen to get a butcher knife (am I the only one who does that?)

*shudder*

The movie takes place in the near future (it's 1995), a future that looks just like 1981 save for thousands of different robots who now carry out every minial task from serving drinks to fighting crime. Two of those robots gaze longingly out of the factory window at a rainbow (awww!) and wonder what possibilities might be waiting for them on the outside (It's rough enough out here just stay in the factory, okay?!). They are Val and Aqua played respectively by Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters, the latter of whom spends the ENTIRE movie grinning and assaulting us with a phony southern accent. This wouldn't bother me except for the fact that Peters is a native of Queens, New York! It's New Yawk, ya'll!

Breaking out of their factory crates, the pair venture out into a world that looks remarkably like the wooded backlot of Universal Studio. I had a lot of time to study the surroundings because this journey more or less begins and ends on the same terrain. So does the dialogue as Val and Aqua trade inane quips and stilted dialogue that isn't just mechanical, its inevitable.

Along the strange road the couple meet up with another pair of oddballs, the first is Catskill, a borsht-belt comedian who looks like a nickel-plated Vito Corleone and tells jokes that went out with high button shoes. The other is a baby robot named Phil, voiced for some reason by Jerry Garcia (yes, THAT Jerry Garcia). Phil is created out of parts that Val and Aqua pull off of themselves, that's right! They have a love child!

In this wooded area the quartet walk and talk and walk and talk and walk and talk and blah blah blah blah bling bling blah!

In order to keep the audience from falling asleep in the first 10 minutes (which, judging by the disasterous box office reception, seems to have been the case anyway) the movie cobbles together a subplot about an overzealous droid crimebuster named Crimebuster (!) who is on a seek and destroy mission but is forever introducing himself when he isn't ridding the world of such unwholesome scourges as skunks, rabbits and an uncooperative tree stump. Even weirder is that Crimebuster comes packing his own theme music, a strange military precussion section that mercifully drowns out most of his dialogue. Would you believe that it comes courtesy of the great John Williams? Don't think about that too long, it will reduce you to tears.

I mentioned earlier that this was a failed experiment but I also think it was also a failed experiment in another way. Universal Pictures gave Andy Kaufman a blank check (never a good idea) to make this film after focus group testing indicated that children liked robots apparently because of the popularity of R2-D2 and C-3PO. Did I say failed experiment? No it's an experiment that went horribly awry until it went down in a big fiery ball of flame.