‘The Electric State’ Review: Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt Tangle With Robots in the Russo Brothers’ Busy, Boring Netflix Sci-Fi
The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1” is a gorgeous blast of psychedelic dream pop about a Japanese girl warrior who represents the best chance of defeating evil machines programmed to destroy humanity. The song evokes an anime sci-fi world that would be merely comical if not for the moving infusion of hope and melancholy in Wayne Coyne’s vocals. The 2002 track is a fitting if obvious choice for the end credits of Netflix’s The Electric State, even if it inadvertently points up some of the key qualities the movie is lacking, namely charm, wit and genuine feeling.
Co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo take full ownership of their boys-with-toys mojo in this slick but dismally soulless odyssey across the American Southwest in a retro-futuristic alternate version of the 1990s. Following Cherry and The Gray Man, the brothers continue their post-Avengers streak of grinding out content for streaming platforms, amassing big budgets and marquee-name stars for quick-consumption movies destined to leave zero cultural footprint.
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Based on the well-received 2018 graphic novel by Swedish artist Simon Stalenhag and adapted in workmanlike fashion by longtime MCU collaborators Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the film is busy to a degree that grows more and more assaultive. But it’s neither funny nor exciting. Like so many streaming originals, The Electric State seems less a real movie than an imitation of one, in this case with vague aspirations toward canonical Amblin.
The mix of adventure, comedy and sentiment also seems to be straining for Guardians of the Galaxy territory, an impression deepened by Chris Pratt giving essentially the same performance (see also: Jurassic World franchise). Not to mention the quirky deployment of vintage rock — Tom Petty, The Clash, Judas Priest — alongside lush pop instrumentals like “Don’t Stop Believing,” “Wonderwall” and “I Will Survive.”
By the time the ultimate clash between good bots and bad revved up to “Ride of the Valkyries,” I was yearning for great robot sci-fi with heart like Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant or even something as endearingly silly as John Badham’s Short Circuit. Hell, I was even thinking wistfully of Rosie, the mechanized housekeeper on The Jetsons. Nostalgia in movies like this should be a warm throwback, not a reason to think of more entertaining dips into the same genre pool.
The story kicks off in 1990, “Before the War,” introducing Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) and her adored younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman), whose genius IQ has him fast-tracked for college. When Chris’ favorite Saturday morning cartoon show, Kid Cosmo, gets canceled, it’s merely the latest manifestation of growing anti-robot unrest in the human population.
Sentient robots have been mass-produced and become the backbone of the workforce, but when they start to demand rights, stage protests and refuse to comply with a mandate from President Clinton to return to work, people get nervous.
Cut to 1994, “After the War.” Tech innovator Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) has developed virtual reality helmets called neurocasters with bifurcation capabilities, meaning people can work and play at the same time, enjoying safe VR leisure pursuits while their robot avatars take care of the hard stuff in the dystopian real world.
Orphaned Michelle has become a ward of the state, forced to live with Ted (Jason Alexander), an exploitative slob who sits around watching Vegas showgirls through his neurocaster while his bot version argues with the rebellious teen.
Michelle believes Chris was killed in the same auto accident that took their parents’ lives. But when a robot with the round yellow lollipop head and toothy smile of Kid Cosmo turns up in her room (voiced by Alan Tudyk), she quickly overcomes her disbelief and realizes it’s her brother’s mechanized twin. That means the flesh-and-blood Chris must still be out there.
Following their failed uprising, robots have been decommissioned and exiled to “Rest Areas” in what’s now known as the Exclusion Zone, an off-limits stretch of desert in the Southwest where contraband prewar artifacts are also stored. Ted’s packages containing those goods purchased from a black-market vendor lead Michelle and Cosmo to New Mexico.
They connect with smuggler Keats (Pratt) and his wisecracking robot sidekick Herman (Anthony Mackie), whose warehouse contains vast stocks of relics like the plaque-mounted animatronic singing fish known as Big Mouth Billy Bass, Cabbage Patch Kids, plushie toys and even illegal foodstuffs like Spam. Before Keats can shake off Michelle and Cosmo, Robot Deactivation Task Force agent Colonel Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) descends on them with guns blazing, forcing them to team up and flee.
The motion capture work behind the bots is more than serviceable, and considerable imagination has gone into creating distinctive droids rather than uniform A.I. machinery. But all the cartoon-derived automatons get cutesy real fast, and the over-population of inessential characters becomes just one symptom of the movie’s increasingly tiresome “bigger is better” ethos.
Often, the Russo brothers fold in new elements or eccentric plot turns that seem designed more for the purpose of spectacle than narrative. The only possible reason for a bulked-up Herman — a mechanical matryoshka with a full size range of exoskeletons — to carry Keats, Michelle and Cosmo in a Volkswagon bus is because a giant robot hoicking a vintage VW up on its shoulder and sprinting across the Monument Valley desert is a cool image.
The character overload gets worse once they locate Dr. Amherst (Ke Huy Quan), the hospital surgeon who misled Michelle into believing her brother was dead, and the cloistered community of robots tucked away in the desert that the doc hopes will help their mechanized friends earn back respect and acceptance as a people. Prominent among that group is folksy Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson), feisty baseball-shooting Popfly (Brian Cox) and perky U.S. Postal Service bot Penny Pal (Jenny Slate).
Of course, clues concerning the location and function of the real Chris point back to Skate, a villain who believes he’s helping humanity but has no qualms about collateral damage. He’s also the product of an abused childhood, because, well, every bad guy now apparently must be hatched from trauma. When the motley crew of rebels and runaways converge on Skate’s HQ, it’s all too inevitable that a Marvel-size clash will ensue.
That final act also sets the scene for an emotional catharsis of sorts that attempts to wring tears out of the audience, with an aggressive assist from Alan Silvestri’s hard-working score. But that would require some kind of emotional investment in characters that seldom get as far as two-dimensional. The actors are all game for anything, but this is thankless work, in which the mix of live action and animatronics has no magic. The same goes for the talented voice cast, which also includes Colman Domingo and Hank Azaria in small roles.
The movie’s message about taking a step back from technology to reconnect on a human level is a hackneyed one we’ve heard countless times before. But it’s especially rich coming from Netflix, Kingdom of the Algorithm.
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