peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2023 04 12 BigBug

BigBug (2022)

/noise/movies | Link

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest feature. Prompted by Shane Danielsen. Visually it's essentially The Jetsons where the people live in (grounded) 1950s Art Deco suburbia while adbots float through the sky. The domestic robots have human envy while the robocops just want to liquidate everyone. Inevitably some centralised (financialised) system goes wrong and the house goes into lockdown; in this and other ways it's a COVID movie and who wants to go there? Previously Jeunet's incorporation of visual flourishes and kooky automata have redeemed his lack of analytical depth but those tricks do not yield more than a snoozefest this time around.

Jeannette Catsoulis: "is an android with a soul any scarier than a human without one?" Charles Bramesco: French comedy is no laughing matter, and Danielsen concurs.