An orphaned teen hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.
Chuck says:
Like a battered robot badly in need of repair, there’s a lot rattling around in the Russo Brothers’ “The Electric State,” a piece of sci-fi sentimentality of the sort Steven Spielberg once cut his teeth on. A pastiche of oft-used ideas masquerading as social commentary, the film, which cost Netflix a whopping $300 million, ambles about in search of inspiration, catching fire occasionally, only to ultimately settle into a pattern of bloated action sequences alternating with scenes of predictable plotting. “State” proves all the more frustrating as its strong cast and imaginative special effects, all wind up going to waste.
The film starts like gangbusters with an exposition dump that gets us up to speed on all that’s been afoot. Advances in robotics by the Sentre Corporation allowed mechanicals to become a significant part of the global workforce. However, when they’re A.I. brains “achieved consciousness” a worldwide revolt ensued. The War for Robot Rights lasts two years, until Sentre founder Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci, phoning it in) develops the Neurocaster, a device that allows him to control the tin can toilers.
Peace is made, but it’s an uneasy truce. The more advanced robots have been sent to the Exclusion Zone, a 100,000 square mile prison in the Southwest. Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) sets out to break into the makeshift prison, as she has reason to believe her brother, Christopher (Woody Norman), is being held there. Told years before he’d been killed, along with their parents, the young woman comes to believe this is a lie when she’s visited by a robot containing pieces of his personality.
The trip into the Zone is a long one, as screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely include far too many ancillary characters and incidents. As a result, a sense of urgency is never created, the film becoming a long slog populated with familiar characters and brought low by predictable plotting.
Michelle is joined in her quest by Keats (Chris Pratt), a scavenger who regularly ventures into the Zone to collect analog items big-money collectors are eager to have. He’s accompanied by his ‘bot buddy Herman (voice by Anthony Mackie), who gets him out of jams time and time again. You can tell even Pratt knows he’s played the role of the roguish, reluctant hero too often. He’s labored throughout, his enthusiasm waning as the film progresses, his line readings lacking spontaneity. That the Russos didn’t hold his feet to the fire to elicit a more convincing performance is a mystery.
Countering his bland turn is Brown’s overearnest performance. The actress should be commended for investing in her role as she does, yet there are times when the anguish, anger or excitement she conveys is just too much, coming off as calculated rather than sincere. As for Tucci, he’s phoning it in here, a big paycheck his likely motivation for each scene.
The film’s strongest suit is the production design by Dennis Gassner and Richard L. Johnson, an apocalyptic landscape littered with pop culture allusions. The massive budget is on full display, the attention to detail making for a fully lived-in environment that solidly anchors the movie’s sense of place. Populated by characters rendered with the best of today’s best special effects, it’s a setting begging for an innovative, engaging narrative to match it.
Once the end credits roll, you’re likely to feel as if you’ve accompanied Michelle and Keats over every long mile of their journey. To be sure, “State’s” plea for us to put our increasingly invasive technology aside and return to the practice of embracing human interaction is a timely and urgent one. Ironically, the message comes off as a rather insincere afterthought in this empty, excessive entertainment that neither dazzles nor inspires.
2 Stars
