Hello, moviegoers! Tonight I am telling you about the film with the worst chosen title I have seen this year: Mother/Android.
I am sure seasoned moviegoers have already seen that post-apocalyptic movie in which everything is going to hell, and a group of survivors is trying to make their way through an horde of zombies, aliens or whatever, in order to reach a faraway place which is said to be a safe haven. My hunch is that the guys behind Mother/Android have already watched such, and were thinking: "That idea is so worn out and used up that it is not worth it makign such a movie anymore. Let's do something groundbreaking instead. Maybe a post-apocalyptic movie in which a group of survivors have to fight their way through an horde in order to reach safe haven, but the main character is a pregnant teen. Sure, THAT will do it!"
In Mother/Android's world, humanity has developed advanced robots who look like humans and are used as servants by everybody. One day, for reasons not explained in the film, US androids rebel and start a campaign to destroy mankind. The movie follows a pregnant teen and his boyfriend as they try to survive the fallout, and reach Boston so they can get on a boat and escape to an android-free country.
We get a strong start with the android rebellion, but the film turns into an unbearable slog the very second we move past it.
First of all, the main characters reek Millennialism so badly. They spend most of the time bitching and arguing and making a fool out of themselves. The gal in particular gets the prize for the most annoying bitch in the kennel. She is the sort of girl who would throw an stereotypical "female tantrum" while the wrld is being raveged by rogue AIs. "You only want us to take a boat so you don't have to take responsibility for us anymore, waaah, waaah!!!!" I would be sorry for his boyfriend, except a) he chose such fate by bedding such bitch and not dumping her while he had the chance and b) he has a ridiculous man-bun which gets to my nerves.
The film and atmosphere lacks consistence. Nearly the begining we are shown the methodical procedures the army uses to ensure that people who makes it past checkpoints are humans instead of android infiltrators. Then things happen which depend on such controls not being performed because the guards don't care.
Mother/Andorid suffers a big issue, and it is that it does not know which sort of movie it wants to be. It is not an action movie because there is not enough action. It is not an horror movie, or a thriller. At some point it decides to be a pregnant teen drama with rogue androids killing people in the background, but it gets very borying because there is so much talking and nothing happening for so much of the movie.
The ending is so stupid that it got a handout from some government campaign in support of the disabled. Worst yet: it spent like 15 minutes passing flashes of how life would have been for the main characters had the robots not screwed everybody up, in an attempt for us to feel sorry and sad. Or something. There are also references of the army taking kids from their mothers because they can't ship whole families to safety, and they try us to cry with that too.
Except that, by that point, you are rooting for the androids because they are the only sane entities left in the planet and humans are too stupid to live. Geez!
The imagery of this film is quite fine and the first military outpost and security procedures we run into are quite well displayed, so I guess this alone saves this movie from getting a score of Zero. Past some point it all becomes cheapo, with cheap CGI cities burning so fakely that you will pull your hair out of your head.
Mother/Android thinks that a teen in a wheelchair rolling down an actual battlefield with a baby in her hands is heroic and can fend off an android invasion by herself where the army cannot. While the idea would work in a film which was not taking itself seriously, Mother/Android plays it with a straight face and comes up as pretentious instead of just cheesy fun.
Some of the android effects are cool, though. Androids that are not trying to pass as humans have a sinister blue glowing to their eyes, and we are also treated to Terminator-like effects when they take damage and the mechanical parts under their skin are revealed. At times, though, the efforts come across as cheap. It is very inconsistent.
I think not even the most rabid feminist, no matter how much they want a film about a strong pregnant woman taking the lead, would be able to sit through this thing. Because it is not a movie: it is a *thing*.
If you want a nice film about robots uprising, go watch something else, because this isn't.
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