SnoopyStyle
Val (Andy Kaufman) is a high class robot damaged in an industrial accident. He's put in storage next to Aqua (Bernadette Peters). He's a business robot and she's given more charm. They are joined by comedian robot Catskill. They leave the warehouse to gather input and are pursued by the Crimebuster robot. Robot mechanics Charlie (Randy Quaid) and Max (Kenneth McMillan) are sent to retrieve the robots. Val and Aqua build Phil out of spare parts.It's not cute enough to be adorable. The robotic acting forced on Andy and Bernadette leaves out the humor. Catskill's bad jokes only deaden the comedy. There is 1 or 2 touching moments if the audience can stay awake.
David Fowler
As I write this, I am 40 years old. "Heartbeeps" was released in 1981, so I assume that it played cable...HBO?...the same year, possibly 1982. Either way, I would have been 9 or 10 when I first saw it. I remember that it played incessantly...and I watched it each and every time. I must have seen it literally 40 or 50 times, and I loved it every single time. I remember being entranced by it, but the exact reasons why faded with the years. I was left with just good feelings and good memories until very recently when I was able to see it again. I had certainly read about it in the past. I knew that it was supposed to be really terrible, indeed one of the worst movies produced in the 80's. So terrible that Universal took control from Allan Arkush and cut it to 75 minutes, plus credits, and so terrible that Andy Kaufman went on the Letterman show to apologize for it. I knew all that, but when I saw it again....I still just freakin' LOVED it! No...it's not the funniest thing ever or the best written...but, for me, it WORKS! It gets to me just the way it did when I was 9. The funny parts are funny, the tense parts are tense, the poignant parts are genuinely poignant. I can very well appreciate now that Kaufman's performance...especially his character voice... might be very annoying to many people...though, to me, not as annoying as almost anything Jerry Lewis ever did...,but what truly saves Kaufman's performance is that it wasn't his trademarked, detached smartassery...it was a genuinely sincere characterization with zero winking at the camera. I think that that very quality may have contributed to the detriment of "Heartbeeps" because sweetness and sincerity are anathema to the accepted Kaufman persona. Regardless, both he and Bernadette Peters were wonderful in this film, as were Jack Carter as the voice of "Catskill" and...very weirdly...Jerry Garcia as the voice of "Phil". Try as I might, I simply cannot find what is SO terrible about "Heartbeeps". It made me happy as a child...and it makes me very happy now. Screw the haters.
Wizard-8
If you have witnessed Andy Kaufman's slant on comedy, you may understand why I avoided this movie of his for years. Actually, for most of that time, I couldn't see it even if I wanted to - video stores in my area didn't stock it, and it never appeared on TV. I had to rent it online when recently I finally got the courage to give it a try.My heart sank during the first few seconds of the movie. The comedy in this opening is both very familiar and unfunny, and the movie manages to sink further and further as it goes on. There's barely a story here, with the bulk of the movie consisting of the robots wandering around... and around... and around until you want to scream. It doesn't help that the robot characters are a turn-off. They don't have much of a personality (they seem very stupid - why should we care about stupid characters?), and their voices are very annoying to the ear.The makeup is good, I'll admit. But it seems odd that they spent time for the makeup when not bothering to present the rest of this world as a futuristic world (the vehicles of this world, for one thing, are present-day gas-powered vehicles.) It's even more odd to consider that no one involved with this movie realized along the way that this project was a train wreck.
robot-cat
I really wanted to like this movie, but the pacing was just way too slow.It was a nice story, but it was really like watching a slug race.The movie would have been better served, if it had some more action. I don't mean anything grand, but at least something in the background.It could have also been helped by songs that set the tone/mood of the more lengthy periods that were absent of dialogue.It's been about 10 years since I've seen it, so I may have to give it another chance.3/10 or *1/2(out of four)
AD
