When my Eldest son, Dexter, was 3 years old I purchased Maurice Sendak’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, and a stuffed “Carol” doll. That was 13 years ago and we loved the book so much that we basically read it till it fell apart and the only memory we still hold is Carol. So you can imagine that I was truly looking forward to this film and was none too surprised that Dexter also wanted to see it (he still secretly sleeps with Carol).
How many man vs. machine movies have there been? Well if you’ve enjoyed them all like I have, you won’t mind this latest version. It has similarities with a lot of it’s predecessors but it has a different twist. You will be reminded of the Terminator and Matrix series, I, Robot, The Island, and even Wall-E to name a few. In this case human beings voluntarily replace themselves with robots (surrogates) that are made to be as close to human as possible and designed to look according to its operator’s specifications. The operators (the actual human beings) live through the surrogates by connecting to them in a complete virtual reality manner.
Finally! The highly anticipated missing tale of “double 0 14”, a.k.a. Mark Whitacre is here. He claims to be twice as smart as 007. Hmmm, not so sure about that but he does have a very strong talent that keeps the people around him as well as us, the viewers, dumbfounded. Steven Soderbergh is back directing another jewel and as usual his flare for the out-of-the-ordinary is prevalent. You will be confused and frustrated but you will also be amused and entertained. This movie is random, crazy, funny, and did I mention crazy.
So, the man behind the infamous Beavis and Butt-head animated series and the motion picture Office Space, is back again with this fresh, new project. It has been a while since we’ve last seen a Mike Judge movie on the big screen so the anticipation was high. I am a big fan of Office Space so unfortunately my expectations were pretty high too, assuming that this would be at least as good as Office Space. Well friends, I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t too thrilled about this movie. It was funny, direct, realistic, and down-to-earth but something was missing. Office Space is an icon of American cinema, it was an instant classic and to this day I continue to quote from that movie. This movie just doesn’t reach that level.
I don’t think I’ve used this particular adjective to describe a movie in a while so here it goes . . . charming. Yes, I’ve said it again, but I do think it has been a while. If it hasn’t, I apologize. However, this movie does deserve that adjective. It is also random, but in a different way. It is romantic and cute, but in a different way. What is the difference you ask?
