The Electric State info:
Director: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
Writer: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Simon Stålenhag
Starring: Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, and Stanley Tucci
Hello and welcome to another week here at 1guysmindlessmoviereviews.com. It’s March, so you know what that means right? It’s time for college basketball brackets and Spring Break. With the weather starting to turn cold again, that leaves more time for both basketball and new movie releases. This week, my pick is “The Electric State,” which is Netflix’s newest release. I owe Netflix a big thank you as well since due to the Netflix Preview Club, I was able to watch this movie 3 weeks early. Since it’s officially released, I am now ready to talk about it. But before I jump into it, I will get my robot voice out to say: Beyond this point, there will be spoilers. Turn around and go back the way you came if you don’t want to know anything about “The Electric State” until you have seen it in its entirety. You may proceed to the main movie reviews page to see what else is available for your reading pleasure.
Ok, for you humans that continued onward let’s get into “The Electric State” and what it’s all about. The best way I can think to describe this is a mixture of “Ready Player One”, “Fallout”, and maybe a dash of “I, Robot” mixed in for good measure. There was a robot uprising of some sort (before the events of the movie) and we are left with the aftermath of that with most robots living in a protected area walled off from all the humans. As most humans spend their day wearing their VR helmets, Michelle (Brown) prefers to enjoy (or not enjoy in her case) the world through her own eyes.
When we first meet her, she is quite lonely and has been ever since her brother died. Not happy with her life, but not willing to do anything about it, everything changes when an odd little robot shows up at her house. Initially freaked out by it since robots aren’t allowed to be in that area, she quickly learns that it may not be what it seems. At the ire of her caretaker Ted (Jason Alexander), she and the robot run off in hopes of finding her brother…who it seems may not be dead.
Hopefully, you’re still following along, there is a lot to go through before you get to the good meat of “The Electric State”, but it’s worth it. Once Michelle starts her journey, that’s when the movie picks up and takes off. Soon after starting, she meets Keats (Pratt) and his robot sidekick Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie) in a delightful scene where we find out that Keats is sort of a re-seller of older pop culture-related goodies. I’m sure there are lots of hidden Easter eggs in this scene and it will definitely deserve another watch to see what I missed.
It’s about this time when The Marshall tracks them down. The Marshall (played by Giancarlo Esposito) was hired by Ethan Skate (Tucci) to get back the robot that came to visit Michelle. After an altercation, they are forced into the walled-off robot lands and are taken to Mr. Peanut (voiced by Woody Harrelson). Even though the only thing Mr. Peanut wants is peace, he eventually decides to help them find her brother by getting them into the building where Skate works.
After another altercation (Skate really wants that robot), they locate Dr. Amherst (Quan) and find out the truth about Christopher. With the help of all the robots and Keats, Michelle is able to make it into the facility and see her brother again. Only she has to lose him again because she knows the right thing to do is to unplug so he dies for good and Skate can’t use his brain anymore. It’s a highly-packed climatic fight and there is a lot that takes place Like Herman dying… but maybe he’s not dead after all.
Honestly, I’m sure reading my five-minute review may sound super confusing, but I watched this with my daughter and she didn’t have any trouble understanding it. I just write like I’m mindless, so I might have made it sound worse. “The Electric State” is a convoluted futuristic movie with a ton of characters and multiple storylines. It has every reason to be messy, but somehow, they pull it together nicely.
Brown and Pratt make a great onscreen duo and the supporting cast along with the all-star voice cast makes it even better. The look and feel of the robots look legit and they make you feel sorry for them. This is a great family flick and I highly recommend watching it with anyone you want so they can join in the madness and fun. With that being said, I give this movie a 7 out of 10!
Have you seen “The Electric State” yet? If so, what are your thoughts on it? Did you find it hard to understand or follow? What did you think of the Brown/Pratt duo? Did you like the way the robots looked? Let me know in the comments below.
That’s it for this week at 1guysmindlessmoviereviews.com. Be sure to join me next week for another mindless movie review of some sort.
