Directed by Anthony & Joe Russo
Screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
Based on The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag
Produced by Russell Ackerman, Chris Castaldi, Mike Larocca, Patrick Newall, Anthony & Joe Russo
Starring
Millie Bobby Brown
Chris Pratt
Ke Huy Quan
Jason Alexander
Woody Harrelson
Anthony Mackie
Brian Cox
Jenny Slate
Giancarlo Esposito
Stanley Tucci
Cinematography Stephen F. Windon
Edited by Jeffrey Ford
Music by Alan Silvestri
Production companies AGBO, Double Dream, Skybound Entertainment,
Distributed by Netflix
March 14, 2025 (United States)
Running time 128 minutes
Budget $320 million
The first thing to know about The Electric State is that the whole thing is daft as tits on a tank. It has the same blend of deadly seriousness and utter lunacy that one finds in, say, Who Killed Roger Rabbit?
It starts out prosaically, even a bit shop worn. We have a girl (Millie Bobby Brown) working to convince her kid brother (Woody Norman) that he really is the smartest kid around and needs to go to college.
Then we go to a narrative clump in which we learn that a computer genius developed “true AI” in the early 1990s—sentient, self-aware, self-conscious machine intelligence. Learning nothing from Douglas Adams, humanity sets these vast minds to work doing all the menial, tedious, repetitive and disgusting tasks that humanity would just as soon not bother with. And oh, gosh, the robots rise up and revolt. There’s a bloody war which the robots nearly win, except the same genius (Stanley Tucci) who developed AI comes up with a way for humans to mentally inhabit and control mechanical drones, which all have the same powers and capabilities of the robots. The humans then prevail.
The AIs are banished to a vast reservation in the southwest, and humanity settles in for a life of indolent ease with “self-intelligent” robots under their direct control to do all the dirty work while the humans vegetate in general squalor wearing VR helmets.
Yes, it turns out this non-workers’ paradise is a crapgnatz world, although it isn’t particularly clear why.
We now cut back to the sister, now a few years older, dyed blonde, and living in a dump with some slovenly older guy who is a foster parent or some damn thing. We learn her parents and brother died in a car crash a couple of years earlier.
Then she sees a robot lurking in the back yard, which is where the movie stops being a hackneyed rehash of Magnus, Robot Fighter and starts getting interesting. The robot in question is called Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), and he has a huge yellow head and a big goofy grin and apparently is based on something from the truly dreadful comic books they had in England in the 1950s. (The English were pants at comic books until the 80s, then they stopped being shite and took the whole god damn industry over) Cosmo is about as threatening as a beach ball, and it seems he carries the consciousness of her dead younger brother. The two set out on a quest to find her brother’s body and reunite it with his mind.
They encounter John D. Keats (Chris Pratt, channeling Han Solo) and his AI robotic sidekick Herman (Anthony Mackie) who is pretty clearly the brains of the outfit. They are smugglers engaging in the transport and sale of pop culture items such as GI Joes in the original packaging, or parts for cars nobody owns any longer.
They learn they must get the information they need from Mr. Peanut. Yes, the legume mascot that’s been around for a century—top hat, monocle, all that. He’s the head of the millions of surviving robot AIs on the reservation, which takes up about 80% of New Mexico. Since they’re going there anyway, they encounter Gus Fring, Robot Killer. OK—it’s actually a drone operated by Giancarlo Esposito, a gifted actor who truly specializes in not being a very nice guy. They defeat him and get away, escaping when a giant version of Herman goes racing west, carrying the group in a dead VW minivan.
There’s already an agreeable amount of lunacy going on at this point, but now they are going to sneak into the AI reservation. This place is a cross between Mad Max and Toon Town. Humanity apparently had a fetish for designing single-purpose AIs based on cartoon characters, commercial mascots, and parodies of human occupations and gadgets. I suspect a large part of the film’s 320 Ohtanibux budget went simply into designing and building these things. There’s an intelligent batting practice pitching machine (Brian Cox, the actor), a determined hair stylist machine, an intelligent fortune telling booth (Hank Azaria) and a Postal Worker (Jenny Slate), who lives to deliver letters to people and addresses that no longer exist. She’s perky and chipper. And useful in a fight, it seems. In one sequence, they are attacked by drones, and her right forelimb suddenly turns into a large laser cannon that blows a respectable hole in one of the drones. John Keats stares at her and asks, “What does a United States Postal Worker need one of those for anyway?” She pauses and replies cheerfully, “Dobermans.” Now lie down. Good boy!
The dialogue is quick, witty, and often demented.
The humor can be subtle. At one point Keats is bemoaning the fact that there is nothing to eat except canned beans and twinkies, and behind him, in the dim background, are shelves stacked with hundreds and hundreds of cans of Spam.
There is a serious, even grim element to the entire story that I won’t describe because that would be a massive spoiler. It does lead to an powerful ending, though, and gives the movie some nice balancing gravitas.
Critics hated the film, of course. Some of them had silly reasons. “It cost 320 Ohtanibux to make!” or “Millie Bobby Brown dyed her hair blonde!” The nerve of her. Who ever heard of an actor pretending to be something she is not?
But the real reason, I believe, was because it did blend the deadly serious with the utterly absurd. That may make for uneven drama, but it accurately reflects life, which is a combination of the silly and the terrible. The French understand this. Jean de La Bruyère some 400 years ago wrote, “La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense.” — “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.” If you don’t think life is like that, an uneven blend of ridiculous and horrific, just look at our current White House.
Great drama? No. A hell of a lot of fun with a satisfying emotional wallop? Definitely.
Forget the critics. This is worth watching.
Now on Netflix.