You could argue that it’s extremely ironic that The Electric State, an absolutely dismal movie about humanity learning to love corporate-branded A.I. robots rising up against digital slavery, is so utterly generic and cobbled together from spare parts that it itself feels generated by a particularly lazy A.I. But even that irony is a cliché at this point. In actuality, it was merely made by the Russo Brothers, who have inexplicably become commanders of massive budgets from studios on the strength of managing the logistics of thoroughly mediocre but commercially successful IP. And yet, nobody remembers Cherry or The Grey Man, the filmmakers’ only post-Avengers directorial efforts, both star-laden but anonymous genre flicks. As far as this most recent effort goes: walk away, there’s absolutely nothing to see here. The Electric State is barely a movie.
Based on Swedish author Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 illustrated novel, The Electric State immediately showers viewers in an info dump to explain that robots, initially introduced into our world by Walt Disney in the ’50s to both amuse and labor for mankind, eventually developed consciousness, and came to resent their enslavement. They rose up in rebellion in the 1990s, starting a war that almost decimated society, and would have were it not for a peace treaty brokered between tech billionaire Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) and the leader of the robots, who of course was, you guessed it, Mr. Peanut (voiced by Woody Harrelson). This is high-stakes, adult cinema.
So now it’s the 1990s — although why this movie takes place in an alternate 30 years ago rather than a near future remains completely unexplained, despite the oodles of exposition saturating the film. The story proper finally starts when orphaned teen Michelle (Netflix darling Millie Bobbie Brown) learns that her little brother Chris (Woody Norman) did not in fact die in a car accident years ago, but is actually hooked into this film’s version of the Matrix or whatever — truthfully, the specifics of the techno-garble don’t much matter. Anyway, Chris visits Michelle in the form of a robot that only speaks in catchphrases and pop culture snippets. And so, she sets out to rescue him with the help of a human smuggler, Keats (Chris Pratt, who is here playing his 15th or so iteration of the “Chris Pratt character”).
The rest of The Electric State is a jumbled collection of imagery recycled from films already trading in pandering nostalgia, like the Transformerses and Ready Player One mashed up with one of those YouTube videos detailing the long forgotten history of some cartoon that came on when you were a kid. One of the characters is literally a Big Mouth Billy Bass. The whole thing is shot through with a dreary blue-grey digital sheen, the result being that nothing here has any weight or texture. Meanwhile, the Russos leave talented actors like Giancarlo Esposito to glower through little monitors attached to CGI robots’ heads, while still others like Anthony Mackie and Alan Tudyk are reduced to crummy one-liners fed into the mouths of corporate mascots from decades past.
Perhaps most damning, however, is just little there is to articulate about something this tin-eared, this empty. It’s Amblin by way of the algorithm. Didn’t we already get Stranger Things? Is this really all it takes? At the end of the film, when the robots triumph over their techbro overlords and convince us all to unplug from social media, maybe we should just take their advice and stop watching movies altogether. If this is the slop they think we’re happy eating, it would be best for everyone.
DIRECTOR: Joe & Anthony Russo; CAST: Chris Pratt, Millie Bobby Brown, Ke Huy Quan, Stanley Tucci, Jenny Slate; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; STREAMING: March 14; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 8 min.
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