Today’s film represents a fascinating new way to fail. It combines some of the best elements of Terminator, Mad Max, Robocop, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse, and creates a unique sci-fi vision that leaves the viewer … completely unimpressed.
It’s hard to see exactly where this film went wrong, but maybe when you’re giving the “sage” role to Woody Harrelson voicing an animatronic Mr. Peanut, that could be a clue. The year is 1994, and the robot revolution has already happened. In this Earth spin-off, the tech that made robots both sentient and pissed off predated the tech that made the internet. As a result, the robots that battled humans looked less-Terminator-y, and more “Chuck E. Cheese”-y.
In fact, the humans “won” the robot wars through the use of Robocop-like avatars. I’m not going to pretend I understand the science here … which puts me exactly on par with the people who made The Electric State. All I know is when we begin, there’s an orphan girl, Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), a deceased younger brother, a dystopia, and an “exclusion zone” the size of Colorado, in which the losers of the robot wars all live in an abandoned mall.
One day, this anime-lookin’ catbot convinces -though a series of hand signals- Michelle that he’s the brother she had assumed died years ago. The choice is clear: sneak into the Exclusion Zone, and find whoever or whatever made this bot while sifting through a menagerie of potentially hostile, potentially lethal, animatronic idiocy.
But first, they need Chris Pratt … and his pet robot.
The biggest problem with The Electric State is not that it’s stupid. I mean, it kind of is. This whole film is like being afraid of a sentient tennis ball machine. The film’s biggest
problem, however, is that it knows how stupid it looks to have Mr. Peanut at the head of a robot army, hence, it cannot decide whether it’s a drama or a comedy, and kinda fails at both.
The Electric State employs a number of good actors, including Brown, Pratt , Harrelson, also Stanley Tucci, Ke Huy Quan, Giancarlo Esposito, and a slew of fun people voicing stupid machines. What it doesn’t have is a reason we should watch for anything other than kitsch gimmickry. The whole film plays like one emptied out the brain of a nostalgic Boomer and made all the nostalgic bits come to life and go to war. I’m sure that will be enough for many, but I was left wondering how you got so much talent to participate in such an empty film.
Once there was a girl named Michelle
Who dwelt in alternative universe Hell
A message from her brother
Sent her out into the other
To discover: life here also ain’t so swell
Rated PG-13, 125 Minutes
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Writer: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Simon Stålenhag
Genre: Our screwed alternative present
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Lovers of kitsch
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you don’t like Mr. Peanut as is, you sure as Hell won’t like animated talking Mr. Peanut
