By Frank Paiva
Special to MSN Movies

Robots are a genre movie staple. Sometimes they're taking over the world. Sometimes they're yearning to be human. Sometimes they're a better actor than Shia LaBeouf.

Real-life robots are nowhere near as exciting as the ones in movies. As a child, my only experience with robots was the floor show at Chuck E. Cheese's. As an adult, my only experience with robots is automated customer service systems that consistently misinterpret the phrase "Speak to a representative."

I have a lot of gay friends, but are any of them as shiny and exciting as C-3PO? I think not.

Practical technology will never catch up to movie magic, and that's probably a good thing. As cinema history shows, sophisticated artificial intelligence has a long track record of anti-human behavior. The same robot could be helping an old lady cross the street one minute, and scavenging her brain for useful tissue the next.

But not all robots are evil. Many of them are quite friendly. Surely I'm not the only person who remembers Furby. And I'm dying for one of those vacuums that moves around the floor on its own accord.

Robots replace humans when a task becomes too menial to stand. Even the world's finest maid could only vacuum for so long.

"Real Steel" is built on this idea, except its robots fight each other instead of dust. The sci-fi drama takes place in the near future, where robots have replaced humans in boxing. Hugh Jackman plays an over-the-hill fighter, who never got a shot at glory, who trains a hopeful android champion. And you thought Hollywood was out of ideas.

To celebrate the release of "Real Steel," here are 11 memorable movie robots. Most of them are friendly, but a couple of them are evil. So watch your back.

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(Hugh Jackman in "Real Steel"/©Walt Disney Pictures)