The story of buoy meets satellite isn’t all that romantic.
I saw “Love Me” virtually from the Sundance Film Festival last year, and it was one of the few films I didn’t really care about. It’s basically a live action gender swapped “Wall-E,” with a smart buoy and a satellite after an Ice Age that killed off of humanity. They start off as technology and then, they develop as humans in their own world: here in the form of Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun. Or it could be a tedious version of “Her.” You decide.
This smart buoy was developed in 2025 (that’s this year), and is able to see Instagram posts and YouTube videos, including one with Kristen Stewart as IG star Deja saying “You’re special, you’re worthy, you’re you,” and Steven Yeun as her husband Liam.
These two objects sound like generic robots, but the videos and posts become the buoy’s motivation to use Deja’s voice and for the satellite to sound like Liam. And then, they make CGI avatar versions of themselves wearing onesies, and later their real live-action selves. That is if they are real.
There isn’t much meaning inside “Love Me.” In fact, it’s quite meandering when these two pieces of technology fall in love, have their conflicts, reunite, and then, the cycle repeats itself. Correction: it’s formulaic. How many romantic movies are we going to keep seeing of this sort? Probably a lot more. But in this case, regarding the machines’ transformations, are they actually becoming human or is there world escapism from the end of the world? That’s my question.
Just last month, a portion of us critics disliked “The End,” which was Joshua Oppenheimer’s musical also set after the apocalypse and also featuring a small romance between a young man who has never seen the outside world and a survivor who unexpectedly arrives in his family’s sanctuary. And like “Love Me,” I was interested in the concept, but bored by its soapy screenplay and flat characters.
“Love Me,” which is distributed by Bleeker Street, is not much of a directorial debut for Sam and Andy Zuchero, nor is it a good “Wall-E” and “Her” combo. If they wanted to make an original romance, then they should get lessons from Richard Curtis, or maybe even John Crowley, who took the genre on a deeper level in “We Live in Time.” That film had lovers we were interested in getting to know, but this buoy and this satellite are no Wall-E or E.V.E. In fact, they would be better off on the Hallmark channel. Or maybe even Netflix. If Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry can succeed with “The Union” and if Lindsay Lohan and Ian Harding can succeed with “Our Little Secret,” then why can’t this buoy and satellite succeed there?
Reminder: I disliked “The Union” and “Our Little Secret.”