HEARTBEEPS: The Little Robot Romantic Comedy That Couldn’t

As the 1970’s gave way to the 1980’s, a changeover was afoot in the American movie busi­ness.  The “New Hollywood” auteurist move­ment of the 1970’s and all the per­sonal films that came with it were giv­ing way to a pro­fes­sional, marketing-minded wave of block­busters ush­ered in by the likes of Lucas and Spielberg.

A few last-gasp stabs at non-“event movie” self-expression limped out of the stu­dios at the dawn of the 1980’s as the New Hollywood gave up the ghost.  Most were given cur­sory releases, aban­doned by their stu­dios to find fol­low­ings on home video or cable.  A hand­ful suf­fered the addi­tional indig­nity of post-production tam­per­ing from their stu­dios, who were start­ing to tai­lor all their fare for mass appeal, whether it was suited for such a treat­ment or not.

When Your Humble Reviewer thinks of films from this era that suf­fered the lat­ter fate, Heartbeeps inevitably pops to mind.  This genre-bending sci-fi/romance/comedy was sub­stan­tially re-edited at the eleventh hour by Universal, who cut ten min­utes to make it faster and more “action-oriented.”  This made it the kind of cin­e­matic curate’s egg that inspires vit­riol from all cor­ners of the movie-viewing com­mu­nity.  Even today, it gets with­er­ing reviews: check out this DVD review for proof.

It’s tough to say whether or not the miss­ing ten min­utes would have saved Heartbeeps because it’s a pretty tough sell, even with the commercial-minded reed­it­ing.  John Hill’s quirky yet heart­felt script chron­i­cles the romance between two robots at a repair facil­ity.  Val-Com 17485 (Andy Kaufman) is a finance expert ‘bot who takes notice of Aqua-Com 89045 (Bernadette Peters), a lovely “host­ess” model who attempts to engage him with human-style warmth.

The two decide to escape and learn more about the coun­try­side they see through the repair facility’s win­dows.  They take along CatSkil 5602 (Barry Diamond), a joke-telling enter­tain­ment ‘bot.  The trio begin to expe­ri­ence some­thing approach­ing human emo­tions as they try to elude staffers from the repair place and Crime Buster, a mal­func­tion­ing droid with high-power artillery who has con­vinced him­self that the robot escapees must be elim­i­nated at all costs.

The fin­ished prod­uct plays in a fast-paced but curi­ous style, man­ag­ing to deliver too much of some ele­ments and not enough of oth­ers.  Crime Buster was bumped up to promi­nence in the re-editing, which unfor­tu­nately high­lights that said char­ac­ter is lit­tle more than a plot device.  The fre­quent cut­aways to his one-note antics are dis­tract­ing.  Meanwhile, the major Val and Aqua sto­ry­line reg­is­ters but feels like it has a few beats miss­ing due to the stream­lin­ing the story was given.  This is a movie about char­ac­ters, not action, and the reed­it­ing misses that point in a way that short­changes the film on both the char­ac­ter and action forefronts.

The film has other prob­lem­atic issues that weren’t caused by stu­dio tam­per­ing.  John Hill’s script is suf­fused with a unusual brand of whimsy, a mix­ture of corny humor and unabashed emo­tion­al­ism that is an acquired taste.  Also, Allan Arkush’s direc­tion, while solid, is curi­ously bereft of the energy and per­son­al­ity that informed his work on Rock & Roll High School.  The end result feels like an extended length episode of Amazing Stories — and one of the more cutesy ones at that.

The afore­men­tioned flaws make it easy to see why a lot of view­ers are still dri­ven to dis­trac­tion by Heartbeeps.  However, it does have some wor­thy ele­ments that its detrac­tors often miss.  The rela­tion­ship between Val and Aqua has a gen­uine, non-ironic  sweet­ness to it, mainly due to impres­sive per­for­mances by Kaufman and Peters.  They find the right blend of man­ner­isms and heart in their respec­tive roles and share an off­beat chem­istry that makes their love affair appeal­ing in a very odd way.  As the end nears, the duo’s will­ing­ness to make sac­ri­fices for each other is unex­pect­edly touching.

Heartbeeps offers some sim­pler plea­sures for b-movie archae­ol­o­gists.  For instance, there are a lot of impres­sive pre-CGI effects: Stan Winston’s char­ac­ter make­ups for Val and Aqua look fan­tas­tic, the “baby robot” they have is done with impres­sive prac­ti­cal effects (plus the voice of Jerry Garcia, believe it or not) and Albert Whitlock sup­plies some lovely old-school matte effects.  There are also tons of famil­iar faces that will please Roger Corman fans: Dick Miller, Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel all turn in fun cameos that give this feel of an over­bud­geted New World Pictures release.

Ultimately, Heartbeeps is of lim­ited inter­est because it’s too con­cep­tu­ally odd to have mass appeal and the post-production tweak­ing fur­ther dulls its charm.  It’s a mis­fire — but an inter­est­ing mis­fire if you have the patience for its dis­tinctly twee brand of roman­ti­cism.  Whatever side of the equa­tion you fall on, the film remains inter­est­ing as a con­ver­sa­tion sub­ject because of its New Hollywood-style blend of eccen­tric­ity and well-financed craftsmanship.