What if AI takes the form of a doll with a massive chip on its shoulder? 2023's M3GAN runs with this premise into a depressingly lame movie. I say depressingly because this movie was extremely popular.
People call it a horror comedy. Not much of the comedy seems intentional. I laughed when M3GAN turned out to be super strong with no explanation. But it sure seemed more like lazy writing than comedic writing. Growling sound effects for when M3GAN is watching from the shadows don't make any sense, either, and seem like hackneyed cues put in so that people know it's a horror movie, like applause cues on a sitcom.
The production design is really bland, as usual for anything produced by James Wan. Lots of large rooms with blank walls and department store showroom furniture.
The film was written by Akela Cooper, whose writing for Luke Cage I don't remember being this bad. I guess at the beginning of the film there's some depth to control freak Gemma (Allison Williams), who's compelled to adopt her niece after her parents die in a car crash.
That car crash scene features the girl's mother sensibly pointing out a series of mistakes made by the father who becomes moronically defensive each time. "Why didn't you put chains on the tires?" "Hey, neither of us knew that was a thing until like ten minutes ago." This as they're driving up a mountain in a snowstorm. I guess that's kind of funny.
But the meat of the movie is insubstantial. M3GAN, created by Gemma for her niece to play with, is supposed to be the perfect toy and the little girl's supposed to be obsessively attached to her. But all the doll does most of the time is scold and lecture the girl, telling her to use a coaster or giving her a lecture on how condensation works. The big moment when M3GAN is supposed to show herself as uncannily perceptive and sensitive shows her recording the little girl recalling a memory of her mother. And then M3GAN sings a cheesy song. As far as I can see, she doesn't have much on Teddy Ruxpin. I guess maybe we're supposed to find this funny but I really think it was meant to be scary.
One critic on Wikipedia is quoted as calling her a "gay icon" because she's "gorgeous and loyal but messy and insolent." If by "messy and insolent" you mean neat-freak who tries to take control of the household by murdering people. I feel like it's slightly homophobic to call every feminine psychopath that comes along a "gay icon".
M3GAN goes after one boy who tries to bully the little girl. She plays dead when he thinks she's just a doll at which point he takes off her shoe and hits her in the face before she comes alive and tears off his ear with the super strength she has for no apparent reason. It's weirder that he hit her in the face. When he took off the shoe, I thought he was going to molest her, which would have make more sense for the kind of boy he appeared to be. But I sense we can't even show a doll being assaulted now. We're a long way from I Spit On Your Grave. Too many scenes feel less like the writer intelligently imagining would happen and instead plugging in stock scenes, attuned for genre expectations and prescribed morals.
M3GAN is available on Amazon Prime.
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