Netflix spent $320 million on this sorry action flick directed by Joe and Anthony Russo. The Avengers film-makers have worked for more than seven years to bring this to the screen. They need not have troubled themselves on our account.
Unlike with the similarly pricey Joker: Folie à Deux, you can see where the Russo brothers spent the money. There are CGI bells and whistles, celebrity-voiced automata, and Chris Pratt throwing Chris Pratt shapes.
Millie Bobby Brown is sweet as Michelle, a caring big sister to Christopher, her missing sibling, living in an alternate history adapted from Simon Stalenhag’s illustrated novel.
Cue pop 1990s references. A doctored timeline between Walt Disney and Bill Clinton includes a devastating war between humans and robots. That ended with the suppression of the rebellious machines and the widespread adoption of the Neurocaster, a virtual-reality doodah invented by a sinister tech billionaire, Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), that allows humans to chill in helmets as their drone bodies do the work.
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If that weren’t convoluted enough, Michelle finds a robot version of Christopher’s favourite cartoon character, Kid Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), in her shed. She interprets this visitation as a sign from her long-lost brother and treks towards Seattle, with a little help from Pratt’s black marketeer, Keats, his wisecracking-android sidekick, Herman (Anthony Mackie), and a folksy robot cohort voiced by Woody Harrelson, Jenny Slate and Colman Domingo.
The motion-capture wiz Terry Notary helped bring the robots to life. If only someone had done the same for the scrap-metal script.
Who is this for? Too juvenile for 1990s nostalgics and too violent for tots, The Electric State keeps shifting tone in what feel like rug-pulls. The cartoonish bots are a poor fit for a sweary showdown. The plot is a mess of transhuman sci-fi goop and the painfully obvious. When the gang are breaking the law, Judas Priest’s anthem of that name drops; when they don’t stop believin’, here come Journey.
The Spielberg-style wide-eyed magic the film strives for is not part of the Russos’ repertoire. The loud bangs and snarky zingers that powered their Marvel films towards box-office billions are fine for superheroes but not, it transpires, for a big-hearted teenage heroine and her robot chums.
On Netflix from Friday, March 14th
