Pleasantly nutty thriller fun addition to killer-doll genre
The writer Philip K.
Dick once asked: Do androids dream of electric sheep? M3GAN, which stands for “Model 3 Generative Android,” looks as if she/it dreams only of Nicole Kidman in “To Die For.” She’s a fast learner, this wide-eyed miracle of artificial intelligence and machine learning — mean girl, nice girl and killing spree wrapped up in distinctive dance stylings, cunning emotional manipulation skills and a way of running through the woods like a wolf in a skirt. She boasts an unerring sense of exactly when her human companion, a griefstricken young girl, needs comforting, and a few bars of the sappiest you’ve-gota-friend-in-me ballad in the history of song.
There is a human element to the story, even if robotics expert Gemma (Allison Williams) never quite seems human herself. Gemma works for the Hasbro-like toy firm Funki, maker of the talking, pooping “PurrpetualPetz.” Squirreling away research funds for their underthe-radar development, Gemma and her design colleagues Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) come up with M3GAN, an American Girl for the rest of us, carrying a $10,000 price tag (squarely in the American Girl range). Funki’s CEO (Ronny Chieng) sees nothing but dollar signs.
Who needs parents with this silicon-encased wonder around? M3GAN runs a tiptop home-schooling operation; she makes jokes; she listens; she reminds you to put the toilet seat down and wash your hands afterward. The “M3GAN” prologue takes
place pre-M3GAN, with a fatal car crash that robs Gemma’s preteen niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), of her parents and lands the child in the clueless protective custody of her aunt. When Gemma realizes that an early robotic invention of hers is the one source of consolation in Cady’s new life, it’s a quick montage and a couple of minutes of screen time to bring M3GAN into order.
The movie, written with wit by “Malignant” scribe Akela Cooper, tracks the results and the resulting body count. Director Gerard Johnstone brings little style but some hacky verve to a film that slips all over the road in terms of tone, but isn’t dull about it.
At its best, this is a horror comedy, and its antiheroine has learned all her tricks from previous movies. The second an annoying neighbor (Lori Dungey) and her snarling dog show up, you’re thinking: Killer-doll victims one and two, step right up!
M3GAN is both fiercely protective of Cady but also interested in her own health and well-being. The android is played (when we see her portrayed by a human, that is) by Amie
Donald and voiced like a whole team of Bratz dolls by Jenna Davis.
The dumbest thing about “M3GAN” is its dumbest character: Gemma, both as written and as played by Williams, may be the lowest-IQ parental unit in cinema, certainly in the killlerdoll genre. The audience, natch, sees all the danger signs long before Gemma does, and she doesn’t do squat to make Cady’s anguished transition from one life to another any easier. It wouldn’t have killed the creative team to make the movie’s robotics expert a little less … robotic?
At heart, though technically she lacks one, M3GAN is the love child of HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Haley Joel Osment in “A.I.” The film is just funny enough to take your brain off the eye-rolling bits. “M3GAN” offers sadistic mayhem comfortably ensconed inside a PG-13 rating.
MPA rating: PG-13 (for violent content and terror, some strong language and a suggestive reference) Running time: 1:42
How to watch: In theaters