Comedy of heart and laughs
Review
Superintelligence (PG, 106 mins) Directed by Ben Falcone Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
In present day, pre-Covid Seattle, Carol Peters is a perfectly lovely woman getting on with her life and being generally pleasant to everyone around her.
Carol was once an executive at Yahoo, but she left to do something just a bit more righteous and community-focused.
She has a great friend who has attained some nose-bleeding elevation on the corporate ladder, just across town at Microsoft.
Carol was also, once, very much in love with the equally affable George, who she left because she thought she wasn’t good enough for him.
Carol’s life is one of helping friends and occasionally showing up for a job interview, only to be put off by young owners spouting meaningless buzzwords, while expecting her to care about a startup business plan that no-one can adequately describe.
Until, early one morning, television host James Corden suddenly speaks to Carol via her own rice cooker.
A vast and all-controlling artificial intelligence has somehow attained consciousness that very day – and is now sorting out its options for the next week.
It can either work with us to create a utopia here on Earth, leave things mostly as they are, or wipe us from the face of the planet like the ambitious parasites we are and trust evolution to come up with something more tolerable and better-mannered than we ever look likely to become.
It’s a conundrum, and ‘‘Superintelligence’’ – as ‘‘he’’ calls himself – wants Carol to help him decide, mainly by observing her as she attempts to rekindle her romance with George.
Yes, put like that, Superintelligence is neither super nor noticeably intelligent.
The plot stands up to no scrutiny at all, while the comparisons to Spike Jonze’s Her and Marc Forster’s mostly terrific Stranger Than Fiction are kind of damning.
But a film can succeed just by having the simple and quite unfakeable quality of a heart in the right place and a decent cast who are prepared to work a little harder than the script really deserves. Superintelligence is one of those films.
Melissa McCarthy strikes a succession of great notes as Carol.
McCarthy’s career takes in the sublime highs of Can You Ever Forgive Me?, several very good comedies and more than a few misfires, but she’s in her element here, playing a grounded, genuinely funny character, as fearless as she is dignified.
Opposite McCarthy, Bobby Cannavale as George brings a touch of anarchy and unpredictability to what in lesser hands could have been a cliched role.
Brian Tyree Henry rounds out the on-screen cast as Carol’s played-for-laughs best friend.
Director – and McCarthy’s husband – Ben Falcone keeps the action percolating, without giving us too much time to stop and ponder the inanities.
Superintelligence isn’t anyone’s idea of a great film and I can’t see it troubling the podium at an awards’ ceremony.
But it is deftly done, has a lot of decent laughs if you’re of a mood to acknowledge them, knows exactly what pop-culture cards to play (WarGames was a nice touch) and is acted with heart and enthusiasm by some deceptively brilliant performers.
Some days, that’s more than enough.