'M3GAN' stops functioning properly, remains funny and creepy
Universal
The biggest problem with the killer doll movie, it turns out, is that it’s a killer doll movie. And the surprise is that ultimately only matters to a degree.
First off, look at M3GAN, the titular android that toy engineer Gemma (Allison Williams) develops as an extreme attempt to help her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) cope after losing her parents. Gemma neither had any interest in being a parent nor any desire to move forward with her company’s plans for a new wave of underwhelming and weird talking companions, so M3GAN is selfishly motivated too: someone who can help support and listen to Cady and prove the opportunity for a revolutionary doll that can be priced at five-figures and still fly off shelves.
Obviously, this isn’t the story of a happy and flawless new development in society and family structures. Ya know M3GAN will go from only a tad cuddly to very deadly. But anyone waiting for the inevitable chaos will miss the best parts of Akela Cooper’s script (with a story co-credit for James Wan of “Saw” and “Malignant,” the latter which was also written by Cooper). Rather than a mindless retreat of “Child’s Play,” “M3GAN” generates a lot of laughs and a decent point about our reliance on technology and people’s inability to communicate and think clearly in real life. Those who claim the performances are a little robotic aren’t wrong, but maybe that’s deliberate.
So once the doll takes a lot more control over her role in a difficult world, the film — which already suffers from pacing problems and takes too long to really kick in narratively — leans too heavily on predictable violence that director Gerard Johnstone can’t turn into anything memorable. But the look and tone of M3GAN is just right, and it’s hard to deny that the film is sharper and more satisfying than we have any right to expect a movie like this to be.
And for people to leave knowing just how much they don’t want M3GAN for themselves has to count as another point in the thematic win column.
B
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