Courtesy 6th & Idaho Productions
It’d be great if films like Mother/Android, writer and director Mattson Tomlin’s first feature film, were remembered only for how quickly they’re forgotten. But are we ever so lucky?
Not this time. In Mother/Android, we visit the near-future, where everything is exactly the same minus the androids, which humans have programmed to be personal butlers (out of all the possibilities). For reasons as deep as just because, they rebel against their human overlords, who, frankly, treat them fine. Said human protagonists are so bland, though, they make plain cardboard look like a Van Gogh.
Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz) is nine months pregnant throughout this harrowing ordeal, and spends her time screaming at her boyfriend Sam (Algee Smith, who looks like he’s about to pass out between every take) for trying to keep them alive. Why? Just-effin-because. Which makes Tomlin’s debut the purest form of dreck. We can go on about the chaotic editing, the glaring lack of production value, the otherwise talented actors who seem as if they’re being held up by string in efforts to squeeze life out of them—but the reality is that Hulu’s newest venture into cinema is damn boring. It is Children of Men meets The Terminator meets A Quiet Place, and in no subtle way. No emotion bridges to another logical emotion. It can’t. It won’t; what’s happening behind the screen feels too cynical for little tidbits like a logical emotional flow.
There’s a “daddy paid for my college and gave me a small loan to make a feature film that I wrote while listening to libertarian podcasts,” vibe here, and while there’s is often much creativity found in budget productions, this is lazy filmmaking. With so little to admire, there’s little else to do but root for android domination and for the elimination of these pesky annoyances Tomlin has the audacity to call characters. When even his androids are stupid, mindless zombies, it’s hard to not think he’s just revealing what he thinks of his audience.
3
+Decent effects
-Copycat of much better films
Mother/Android
Directed by Tomlin
With Moretz and Smith
Hulu, R, 110 min
