The Electric State – Review

Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours 8 minutes, Directors – Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

When a robot arrives at her home possibly containing the consciousness of her late brother (Woody Norman), orphaned teenager Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) enters a robot exclusion zone looking for answers, with a tech billionaire (Stanley Tucci) trying to stop them.

With a much-mentioned $320 million budget, the Russo Brothers appear to have worried that the visual effects may be so distracting that everything else in The Electric State might not be seen or understood. Therefore, their direction appears to have largely been based around obviousness. Sure, we can understand how a character is feeling through a mixture of elements but can we see it spread across their face? It leads to exaggerated performances, particularly from lead Millie Bobby Brown, where characters feel as if they’re emphasising emotions in some form of pre-take exercise.

Maybe these performances are meant to contrast with the lack of emotion displayed by human faces on robot screens. As Stanley Tucci’s tech billionaire Ethan Skate, alongside robot hunter Colonel Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) follow Brown’s orphaned teenager Michelle into the robot exclusion zone we see their in-person exchanges and the robot forms that hunt down Michelle and shaggy-haired black market tech dealer Keats (Chris Pratt, leaning into a familiar Chris Pratt performance). Their faces appear on tiny screens in the heads of the robots and throughout these scenes appear to display almost no emotion, as if that’s just something that happens with this technology. It creates a real disconnect which echoes throughout the film as in general there’s little emotional connection with the unfolding events, largely due to the fact that the plot beats feel so familiar, and in some cases underwritten.

Michelle’s reasoning for entering the exclusion zone relates to a robot which arrives at her home, claiming to contain the consciousness of her late younger brother (Woody Norman), although only able to speak in catchphrases from an old cartoon. In order to find out what’s happening she must track down robot leader Mr Peanut (yes, the American brand mascot – voiced here by Woody Harrelson), who was at the fore of the fight, and resolution, of the war between humans and robots when worker bots began to demand more rights. And thus we have an alternate 90s landscape full of futuristic technology, as if looking at the past’s view of the future.

Again, the visuals themselves are good and clear effort has been put into making the robots fit into the world shown, although not quite making up for the lack of character they have. Whether the visuals were worth $320 million is a slightly different matter, however a good chunk of that also seems to have gone towards getting quite a starry cast (including Ke Huy Quan, Colman Domingo, Anthony Mackie, Jenny Slate, Brian Cox and Holly Hunter).

However, the cast themselves struggle to bring a proper core to the film. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s screenplay is full of clunky lines of dialogue which strike a similar vein of obviousness, or occasionally stick out as needing a couple of tweaks, as to the directions of the film itself. The Russos appear to be wanting to go for a Spielbergian vibe to both the world and overall feel of The Electric State. As if this could be their Jurassic Park, their AI, or perhaps their Ready Player One – of which there are echoes of in this film, particularly in the final stages. Where things will go feel somewhat obvious from the early stages of Michelle’s isolation and distance from technology, refusing to wear the big virtual reality helmets which are mandatory for school classes, choosing to read a book instead.

There’s a watchable nature to the film as a whole, the biggest issue is because of the fact we’ve seen so much of it before it feels bland. Lacking in a sense of wonder, adventure and exploration which feels as if it should be rooted in a family sci-fi adventure such as this. Instead we get an overfamiliar narrative and set of events which don’t quite capture the imagination, or general engagement. It passes by for 2-hours, but never fully grabs your interest, despite some nice ideas of moments here and there in the exclusion zone once surrounded by the different robots, but even this feels as if it could be reaching for more instead of playing it so safe.

Lacking a full creative drive the overfamiliar nature of The Electric State’s narrative adds to the overemphasised obviousness of some of the performances and dialogue. Watchable, but largely lacking in entertainment and engagement factor.