Much of The Electric State takes place in an “Exclusion Zone” where sentient robots have been exiled. Like that junkyard—and the twisted creatures that upgrade themselves with pieces of their victims—Anthony and Joe Russo’s Netflix spectacular is a film made from spare parts.
Steven Spielberg is their prime source of inspiration, with their tale about a girl searching for her brother in an alternate-reality post-war America welded together from bits and pieces of E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Ready Player One, not to mention Transformers, which the auteur produced. In later passages, even Ke Huy Quan shows up to sweeten the directors’ reheated Spielbergian nachos.
Based on Simon Stålenhag’s animated novel, The Electric State, which premieres March 14, is an attempt at channeling the spirit of its forefathers by unabashedly strip-mining them for everything they’re worth. For the Russos, whose post-Avengers: Endgame features have been largely effects-free, it’s confirmation that they remain capable of helming larger-than-life CGI-ified mayhem that seamlessly blends the real and the unreal. The movie also has made headlines for its reported eye-popping $320 million budget.
Their sturdy stewardship of mecha-mayhem, however, isn’t enough to compensate for the clunkiness of their melodrama, the wobbliness of star Millie Bobby Brown’s performance, and the unoriginality of their tale, whose ideas about artificial intelligence are a significant degree less nuanced than those of acclaimed author (and Three Laws of Robots pioneer) Isaac Asimov.
Solidifying the status of Brown (Stranger Things) as modern genre fiction’s Queen of Nostalgia, The Electric State begins in 1990 with her Michelle professing love for, and praising the Einstein-grade intelligence of, her younger brother Chris (Woody Norman). Immediately afterwards, a montage of news reports and faux-documentary footage (emblazoned with the logos of CNN, Discovery Channel, and NBC) recaps the rise of robots, who were designed by Walt Disney as friendly helpers and soon became society’s ubiquitous servants until they developed the ability to think and feel and, as a result, sought their freedom.
The ensuing war between man and machine was won by the former when tech titan Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) developed a gizmo called a neurocaster that allowed humans to remotely control their own artificial warriors. Robots were imprisoned in the New Mexico desert Exclusion Zone and the neurocaster became the dominant tool of everyday life, allowing users to escape to digital realms of their wildest fantasies.
This has all been seen before, and when the film picks up with Michelle in 1994, she’s a foster child living with a deadbeat (Jason Alexander) who buys black market goods from the Exclusion Zone via the mail. In the dead of night, Michelle is visited by a runaway robot that looks like Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), the cartoon character whom her deceased brother loved. While he can only speak in the TV show’s prerecorded phrases, Cosmo instantly makes clear that he’s actually Chris—or, at least, is being controlled by him. Thus a quest is born, with the duo hitting the road in search of Chris, whom this ‘bot indicates is in the Exclusion Zone.
To get there, they travel to New Mexico to find illegal smuggler Keats (Chris Pratt). An ex-soldier with a Fu Manchu mustache and shaggy hair—which is ultimately cut, for no discernable reason—who steals and sells his wares from an abandoned mine, Keats is a ragamuffin rogue in a typical mold, although the Russos do give him a rousing entrance set to Danzig’s peerlessly bada-- “Mother.”
Keats has his own robot sidekick, Herman (Anthony Mackie), and despite not wanting anything to do with these strangers, he eventually partners up with Michelle and Cosmo to find Chris in the robot wasteland. On their tail is legendary robot hunter Colonel Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito), aka “The Butcher of Schenectady,” who views robots as machines and, therefore, perfectly expendable.
The Electric State establishes its standard adventure template with proficiency but minimal energy, as Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s script is too pre-programmed to excite. Moreover, it’s marked by a procession of one-liners and comedic reveals that fail to land—save, that is, for the amusing revelation that the robots are led by an animatronic Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson), who’s a wise statesman dedicated to robot rights.
During their journey to a final confrontation with Tucci’s Skate, whose villainy is obvious from the get-go, Michelle and Keats bicker and attempt to stay alive amidst plentiful robo-action, and if the Russos never devise an image worth remembering, their inorganic characters are a suitably varied lot, be it a feisty mail lady (Jenny Slate) or a formidable baseball bruiser (Brian Cox). Colman Domingo and Hank Azaria additionally provide their vocal (and facial) talents, yet The Electric State shoehorns everyone into stock roles that desperately want for distinctive personality.
The Russos also embellish their material with a cornucopia of ’80s and ’90s pop culture artifacts: Twinkies, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Big Mouth Billy Bass, and the Clapper are merely a few of the film’s myriad period shout-outs, and that’s without touching upon a soundtrack that includes snippets of everything from Poison’s “Every Rose Has its Thorn” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” to Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and Oasis’ “Wonderwall.”
This all plays as exceedingly cutesy and Brown’s headlining turn is wooden and affected, especially when she’s asked to carry a big emotional or rousing moment. Pratt does a very slight variation on his Guardians of the Galaxy routine, which would be more entertaining if he was given something funny to do.
The Electric State is similarly devoid of anything meaningful to say about technology, ultimately settling on a middle ground where gadgets are scorned as alienating and corrupting, and sentient robots are celebrated as our great and loving equals. Alan Silvestri’s score strives in vain to make the proceedings moving, as does a climax in which saving the world requires committing a mercy killing.
The Electric State is just about as derivative as a modern blockbuster can be, and worse is that it skates along from one cacophonous and jokey set piece to another as if on rails; there’s never a sense that unruly, unpredictable danger or surprise is waiting around the corner. No matter its superficial polish, it’s a soulless replica.
