The Electric State

3 outta 5

The Electric State is Netflix’s 300 million plus stab at event filmmaking by the writers and directors of the last two Avengers movies. After all that money and talent thrown around, the result is okay. There are cool robots smashing stuff, even if almost all of them look grungy, but there is also a randomly super depressing ending to substitute for thematic depth that hits all the wrong notes. Chris Pratt is just playing Star-Lord again which is fine, he’s really good at it. And lead Millie Bobby Brown’s performance choices oscillate between, snarky, mopey, crying and repeat. Electric State better than Borderlands, although it doesn’t exactly look or feel all that different. But at least there’s a few good jokes, some decent sized action, and the musical score by Alan Silvestri is close enough to his Avengers work to fake it.

In the faraway decade of the 1990s. there was a war of robots vs humans and the robots have been banished. What helped the humans win was the Neurocaster technology developed by tech mogul Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci). Teenager Michelle (Brown) is living with a no-good foster dad (Jason Alexander) after losing her parents and her genius younger brother, Chris (Woody Norman). One night a robot named Cosmo shows up at her door, and while it can only communicate with gestures and pre-set phrases, she finds out that the robot is being controlled by her not dead brother. She hits the road, teaming up with Keats (Pratt) and his robot sidekick, Herman (Anthony Mackie). They discover robot refugees led by Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson) and on their tail is the merciless killer of robots, Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito). But with everyone in their way, Michelle may not be able to reunite and save her brother from Skate’s clutches.

Visually, the film looks impressive even if it is exceptionally grey and gritty. It does seem like a few post-apocalyptic movie cliches in a blender. But the robots look cool, they’re basically Walt Disney animatronic cutesy helper robots but turned into war machines. The visual of Mr. Peanut leading a revolution is pretty bizarre, and Harrelson’s voiceover is sombre, but he does eventually get to do some cool robot action stuff. The rest of the robot voiceover work is a bit more upbeat, like Jenny Slate as a chipper mail delivery robot. When the bad guy says she and the robot army are trespassing on private property, she says she is authorized by the US government as a postal service worker. And she has vicious self defence moves that are incongruously funny with her attitude. Another fun robot side character is a baseball playing Popfly voiced by Brian Cox and he incessantly talks in baseball terms while hitting fastballs as defence. Goofy, but it gets a laugh. The Neurocaster technology allows a person wearing a headset while their robot body goes about doing other tasks, with robot bodies with human faces in a visor. Often, people are scattered about on the streets with headsets strapped on them, unmoving, which looks creepy.

The film is shamelessly hitting the nostalgia button with moody covers of iconic ‘80s and ‘90s tunes. Some of it does sort of work, like heartbreaking covers of “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Wonderwall”. The script ping-pongs between extremely maudlin and hilariously goofy, which is hard to pull off. There is something fun bit with Keats in the battlefield fighting giant robots and hollering while Michelle has a very serious life or death conversation with her brother plugged into the machinery. The plot choice at the end is a huge downer, and not as profound as the movie thinks it is. It seems bizarre to throw this into a movie that is primarily concerning giant mascot robots smashing things and making jokes.

Millie Bobby Brown mostly just does variations upon angry, mopey and sad, although it’s not her fault as her character’s dialogue is almost entirely variations upon angry, mopey and sad. Her brother is just a plot piece to emotionally manipulate the audience, but how his robot body can only communicate in set phrases is kinda fun (even though the same basic bit was done better with Bumblebee in Transformers). Pratt’s character is obsessed with ‘80s and ‘90s pop culture relics to sell for trade, which is a lot just like Star-Lord without the jetpacks or emotional depth, but he is still very entertaining. Mackie as the voice of Keats’ robot sidekick is pretty hilarious and the design of the robot is really interesting, as it is a little bulbous head that goes into larger bodies. Alexander as the foster dad is basically a bad stepdad cliché but Alexander gets to yell convincingly. Esposito is the military badass that he does so well, but this time in a robot suit, and his actions at the end are unexpected.

There is some cool sci-fi stuff in The Electric State, although it has been seen before in better sci-fi movies. Once it keeps hitting the ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia music cue button it doesn’t tend to stop, and the film never quite settles on a consistent tone, only at its best when it’s less sappy and just zany. But if one just wants big budget robot spectacle, this does deliver.