5/12 ForReel Score | 2/5 Stars

Where even to begin with The Electric State? The latest film from the Russo Brothers features an all star cast and is set in a 1990s-influenced retro future full of pop culture references, but fails at almost every turn to be anything interesting at all. Let's not mince words here, The Electric State is a colossal misfire on almost every level.

The film is set in an alternate 1994 where robots "invented" by Walt Disney became commonplace in the decades following, and eventually rose up to assert their rights in 1990. The world – of course – went to war to prevent this, with humankind eventually prevailing once reclusive tech billionaire Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) invents technology called a "Neurocaster" that allows humans to control drone bodies, which negates the robots physical superiority.

Millie Bobby Brown plays Michelle, a young woman who lost her entire family in a car accident around the same time. She is everything you'd expect from a 1990s rebel, with bleach blonde hair and a generally grunge look to her fashio sense. She's the only person who refuses to wear a Neurocaster, and has problems with authority in general. Early in the film a robot shows up –a big deal in a world that forced all robots into an "exclusion zone"– and convinces her that it is in fact her dead brother, and they end up on a quest across America to find his real body.

This is a great set up, and the film doesn't do anything with it that you haven't seen before. Basically every cliche is there, including the handsome quippy rogues that join her on her quest, former soldier Keats –Chris Pratt, who is rocking a moustache straight out of the 1980s and playing the same archetype he does in Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World– and his best friend, a loader bot called Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie). Skate also hires a relentless bounty hunter type called Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) to track them down, and every time he does there's a skirmish they only barely escape.

If you think you can guess any of the beats that are coming in this story, or the twist at the end, then you are probably correct. There's not much original here, and it's a very frustrating watch for a host of reasons.

First, there is absolutely no reason for this movie to be set in the 1990s. Some –but not all– computer monitors and televisions are CRTs and some of the fashion looks like what someone told them the 1990s looked like. Except, of course, that some of the characters look like they’re straight out of the 1980s instead. Additionally, there are some needle drops in this movie that are from the 1990s, but most of them are temporally out of place. Kid Rock is name dropped, but he didn't break big until 1999. A sad cover of Osasis Wonderwall plays toward the end, but the original recording of that song wasn't until 1995. The whole thing feels like an afterthought haphazardly tacked on late in the writing.

Similarly, some of the robots are clockwork –which is admittedly pretty cool– but some of them have LED and LCD screens and at least one major one looks like Apple made it in the mid 2000s. It's a miss mash of references that doesn't work as a whole becuase none of it serves to establish a place or time coherently, something the Russos are clearly trying to do.

The script itself is incredibly bland, with everyone basically saying exactly what they're feeling or what's about to happen at all times. There are a few tender moments with Michelle's little brother's robot (who can only speak in pre-recoded lines voiced by Alan Tudyk), as he is modelled after their favourite Saturday morning cartoon, but they're few and far between. Everyone else is about as three dimensional as a piece of paper, and while some of the players are able to make it work (Tucci and Esposito, especially), most of the humans just move from point A to point B to point C without plan or passion or reason, like someone told them they had to rather than having a compelling reason to do so themselves.

One bright spot is that some of the robots are actually very cool. Many of them have intricate clockwork faces and bodies. There has been a lot of talk about the film’s $320 million budget in the lead up to its release, and you can certainly see a lot of it on screen. All of them have great voice talent as well, and it's hard to get mad at, say, a baseball robot that speaks mostly in baseball puns and is voiced by a cranky Bryan Cox. Similarly, Jenny Slate voices a US Postal Bot who sounds and looks like Jenny Slate and that's pretty charming as well.

Others, not so much though. Herman is an interesting bot who has bodies he can climb into and out of like a Russian nesting doll, but Anthony Mackie's voice has gone through so much autotuning that it's nearly impossible to tell its him outside the cadence of his speech. Robot leader Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson) should be cool, but ends up being relegated to exposition.

And then there's the filming itself. The Russos are competent filmmakers, but they don't have a lot of flair. This film at least does pull the camera back and lets us see the action, which is a refreshing change from their past films, but at the same time, there's no joy in any of it. None of the performers seem to be having a good time, and there's no energy to any of it, right down to the colour grade which once again feels like they filtered the whole thing through wet concrete.

There's a possible future where children who see this grow up loving it, much like the Star Wars prequel films that were horrendously received in their time but are now revered as classics by the now adult children who grew up watching them. But that feels like a long shot as Netflix originals tend to disappear into the algorithm with too much speed to catch on.

It is beginning to feel as though the Russos need a machine to work within, like Marvel or a well produced television series, because this is their third directorial misfire in a row whilst working for themselves. The Electric State is a slog to watch, and frustrating not only because it's poorly executed, but because the film is full of good ideas and incredible performers –surely the up front payments for the cast account for a significant portion of the budget– yet, the Russos can't seem to conjure up anything of interest out of it all.

Movie Review: "The Electric State" In A State Of Disrepair