First of all, forget Daft Punk’s ecstatic anthems. Forget “One More Time.” Forget “Around the World.” Hell, forget even the occasional great moment on “Human After All.” Daft Punk’s Electroma—the “odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become human”—is a huge downer, like Brokeback Mountain for robots.

The film doesn’t feature any Daft Punk songs, but rather a score of analog synth drones and oscillations punctuated by the classic rock, r&b, and soft pop of Todd Rundgren, Sebastian Tellier, Brian Eno, and Curtis Mayfield. The cinematography is patient and pretty—lots of slow pans of the American Southwest, shots of the two protagonist robots walking, and the stunning central scene of the robots being “transformed” in a digitally whited-out laboratory populated by matching white figures that merge and emerge with the background in what might be the film’s most striking visual effect—but the pacing is so slow. In just over an hour, roughly three things happen.

The movie begins with some still shots of canyon walls, the rock formations looking almost like human faces. Suddenly, there’s a vintage, black Ferrari parked in the middle of the desert—it’s license plates say “HUMAN” (it’s unclear whether or not this rare cab has dice on the mirror). Two familiar robots—one with a silver helmet, one with a gold helmet, both wearing leather jackets embroidered with “Daft Punk” on the backs—walk up, get into the car, and drive off. They drive for a while. They listen to the radio. They pass a slow-moving tractor being driven by a familiar looking robot. They pull into a small town, and we see that everyone—children, businessmen, a wedding party—sports the same gold or silver helmets. They pull up to a dated, post-war building. Inside is the blinding white, hi-tech lab.

The lab operators pour some brown goo—something in between a latex paint and a chocolate frosting, over the robots’ helmets. They shape it and add molded facial features and wigs to make the robots human. Transformed, the robots strut through town with their new, comical caricatures of human faces. The townsfolk—townsbots?—stare with awed hostility, until their faces start to melt in the hot sun. Our heroes are chased out of town by a mob. They duck into a bathroom and peel off their failed human faces, the gold helmeted bot more readily than his seemingly weaker counterpart. They follow some train tracks and wind up alone in the desert. They walk and walk and walk. Finally, they give up, and the ending, though hinted at by intercut shots throughout the film, still comes as a sad shock.

Making the experience only more depressing was the fact that I still don’t know if I’m going to get into Daft Punk’s show on Sunday. It’s super sold out, and I held off on buying tickets, thinking I’d get in to review the show for Line Out. As of today, there’s still no word on whether or not that’s gonna happen. Bummer. Nevermind. It’s so on!