Jennifer Lopez’s AI movie is too artificial for anyone’s tastes.
Let me be clear. So far this decade, only “Halftime” and “This is Me…. Now” are the better and smarter Jennifer Lopez films, because they both care about the singer/actress as a human being. “Marry Me,” “Shotgun Wedding,” “The Mother,” and now “Atlas,” that’s another story. The kind that somehow speaks to her, but not to us. She can do better than succumb to whatever formulas she’s stuck with.
“Atlas” is the new made-for-Netflix Sci-Fi movie that rips off elements from “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” “I Robot,” “The Creator,” and even a “Wizard of Oz” twister scene. It wants to be another battle between humans and robots, but it couldn’t be bleaker, dumber, and exhausting.
The movie takes place in the future when AI start to turn its back on humanity, and forcing us the International Coalition of Nations (ICN) to retaliate. There’s also the world’s first A.I. terrorist Harlan (Simu Liu), who has overridden the bot programming and fled Earth.
Jennifer Lopez stars as the counter-terrorism analyst Atlas Shepherd, who is also the daughter of Val (Lana Parrila), the woman behind the Harlan. She has been ambitious to capture Harlan or, at least, know whether or not he’s dead. Her colleague-the General Jake Boothe (Mark Strong)-enlists Colonel Elias Banks (Sterling K. Brown) instead of Atlas to take him back alive. She warns them that it’s a fatal mistake, but still convinces the General to let her go on the mission. She pleads: “I need this.” You bet she does.
When their ship gets attacked, Atlas ends up in one of the robotic suits with the computer program Smith (voiced by Gregory James Cohan) guiding her through a desolate planet she crash lands on and driving her crazy with all the protocols he/it must follow.
I should mention that people have ear pieces which can allow the AI to sync with their thoughts and emotions. And Smith literally tries to get through Atlas’ head to see why she intends to bring down Harlan.
“Atlas” was directed by Brad Peyton, who last made the awful ape movie “Rampage.” His new movie has Lopez giving a likable performance in the ways she represent her dislikes for Smith’s protocols. I know how she feels in a sense, because I get annoyed by self checkout lines that either nag to you about removing items from the bagging area or if it doesn’t scan the item on first contact. Some ones work well with me, while others make want to attack them, like the broken fax machine destruction scene in “Office Space.”
But outside that, you have a number of poor CGI effects and sometimes bad editing. It’s the kind of Sci-Fi movie that you don’t care about, and even with all the action sequences, you’re easily distracted by something better you’re reading or surfing on the web. And even the AI get squished or pierced, they ooze yellow blood. At least I think it’s yellow and blood. I don’t know for sure, because I’m not the screenwriter or the Sci-Fi nerd. No offense, guys.
If you had to choose between watching “Atlas” at home or seeing “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” in theaters this Memorial Day weekend,” I would go with “Furiosa.”
Streaming on Netflix