If you are the kind of person who enjoys symbolism, you'll have a field day at Robots.

Ditto if you are the kind of person who enjoys good animation, and double ditto if you love celebrities voicing animated characters.

But the big winners are those who are attending simply for the fun of it.

Production designer William Joyce has come up with a fascinating world that is alien and familiar at the same time. It is inhabited by robots, who eat (well, they pour oil down their joints), sleep, work, raise families, and dream about the future. They have cranky bosses and money problems, happy marriages and good friends.

But there's a problem with spare parts.

At its heart, Robots is about a boy who simply wants to follow his dreams and ends up saving the world.

Happens all the time, right? Well, maybe not. But in the hands of talented artists and actors who lend their voices, Robots becomes not only fun to watch but as plausible as an animated fantasy can be.

That list of talented actors includes stars Robin Williams, Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, and Greg Kinnear. Even more fun is playing recognize-the-voice for many of the minor characters. Among the voices (you find the characters) are Terry Bradshaw, Jim Broadbent, Drew Carey, Jennifer Coolidge, Paul Giamatti, Dan Hedaya, James Earl Jones, Jay Leno, Natasha Lyonne, Al Roker, Stanley Tucci, and Dianne Wiest.

Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor) is a young inventor who dreams about leaving his hometown, Rivetville, and traveling to Robot City to work for Big Weld Industries, where the motto is "You can shine no matter what you're made of." Growing up, Rodney didn't have many material things, but he had his parents' love and support, so he has little doubt he can succeed in the big city.

But when Rodney gets to Robot City, he finds that change has come to Big Weld, and it's not for the good. Instead of the big-hearted Mr. Big Weld, the company is being run by Ratchet (Kinnear), who has changed the motto to "Why be you when you can be new?"

Ratchet's plan is to stop the production of spare parts and simply sell upgrades. Those robots that can't afford upgrades are doomed to rust away and be swept up and taken to the chop shop, which is, interestingly enough, run by Ratchet's mother, Madame Gasket.

Rodney is befriended by the Rusties, a group of robots who live on the fringe. Their nominal leaders are Fender (Williams), a wild and crazy character who is always falling apart, and his spunky young sister, Piper (Bynes). When word gets around that Rodney can fix Fender using found materials, he becomes a neighborhood hero. Then his fame spreads and broken bots are lined up for blocks, waiting for Rodney to help.

This throws a monkeywrench into Ratchet's plans, and he decides to find and dismantle Rodney, who is equally determined to find and reinstate Mr. Big Weld. Rodney gets some help from an unexpected source: The beautiful Cappy (Berry), a Big Weld executive who despises Ratchet and his motives.

Robots is a great deal of fun on several levels, because there's so much to catch. On its most pretentious level (which it keeps reasonably muted), the movie is a satire about corporate greed, materialism, and the lack of respect given to outmoded, but perfectly usable, equipment.

At its most basic level is a story of family love.

At its most slapstick level, Robots has Robin Williams bouncing off the walls, ad-libbing, and making his genie character from Aladdin seem like a model of decorum and sanity.

In between are homages to old movies and television shows, among them The Great Escape, Singing in the Rain, Sesame Street, Star Wars, and Rollerball, and lots of pop-culture references (Britney Gears).

The visuals, too, are delightful. The wild shuttle ride from the train station to downtown Robot City looks as if it was designed by the same people who build those fascinating marble-chutes, such as the one in the main lobby of COSI, where the marble travels from bucket to basket, down rails and up elevators, through tubes, and shot by springs.

Robots is directed by Chris Wedge, who worked on Disney's Tron in 1982, then helped to start Blue Sky Studios, where he is vice president of creative development. Wedge and Blue Sky's short animated film Bunny won an Academy Award, then Wedge directed the successful Ice Age for the studio. A trailer for Ice Age 2 precedes Robots and it's good to know that Blue Sky has more fun in store for animation fans.

For now, though, Robots is a well-oiled piece of family entertainment.

Contact Nanciann Cherry at: ncherry@theblade.com or 419-724-6130.

First Published March 11, 2005, 1:38 p.m.