The Electric State: It's getting destroyed in reviews but I kinda liked it

I think that this is a good case of why you shouldn't allow Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB make too many choices for you. I initially wasn't going to watch it because it has a RT score of 15% or so (which is abysmally low) and in most other situations I would give that a hard pass but the trailer looked kind of funny and interesting to me.

At first I thought it was going to be a "hate watch" or just one of those things where I try to find things that are just laughably horrible about it but I went the whole way through this film and was actually pretty entertained.

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Now I will give you this: The film starts out kind of hokey and unbelievable because this brother and sister duo really really like one another, a lot. I mean, I like my brother and sisters as well but these two's relationship seems like the most fictional part of the entire film and the film is about sentient robots. Perhaps I am going a bit over the top with my assessment of this but basically "Michelle" ("Eleven" from Stranger Things) is encouraging her brother to continue to pursue his academic excellence but he doesn't want to because he will miss his sister too much if he goes to college and well, that is cringe but we need to develop an intense attachment between someone and the parents are not available for this for some reason.

Then a war breaks out between robots and humans and the humans were losing until they developed some sort of weapon that leveled the playing field and eventually forced the robots to sign a peace treaty that banishes all robots to some exclusion zone in the desert.

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I did find it quite amusing that the leader of the robots is Mr. Peanut. Some people might think that is lame but come on now! Mr Peanut is a legend. There are other somewhat recognizable robots that appear in the various scenes and I am not sure if they are from something else but I would imagine that they had to be careful in order to avoid copyright lawsuits.

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The film isn't just about the war between the humans and robots though. In fact, very little of the film is about that and it is shown only in a flashback narrative sort of way, which to me was fine. This film already cost a reported $320 million to make which to me is just crazy that this sort of money would be spent on something that doesn't even have a theatrical run planned for it.

The real story here is that Michelle was told at a young age during a car crash that her parents as well as her brother that she is so attached to were killed in that car crash and she is now an orphan that is being looked after (kind of) by a deadbeat dude who is milking the system. When the guy takes his helmet off to confront her, I was surprised to see that it was Jason Alexander. That guy doesn't really ever have very much to do with films so thins much have been a favor to a friend that was on the cast already.

So Michelle, believing that her brother has been dead for years is visited by a robot that looks like her brother's favorite cartoon character. At first she is frightened and fights it because she has been taught all her life that all robots are evil but after a little while she realizes that it is her brother that has taken control of the robot.

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The Robot is from a cartoon and is named "Kid Cosmo." She eventually figures out that it is her brother controlling it although I don't actually recall how she figures that out because I was in the bathroom when that part happens. The reason why it is difficult is because while her brother is in fact remote controlling the Kid Cosmo, his speech is restricted to certain catch-phrases from the cartoon much like any toy would have been at the time since this film is meant to be taking place in the early 90's.

So she ends up going on a quest to find her bro and along the way she runs into a guy that knows how to get in and out of the robot zone because the plot needs that to happen and we also need to give Chris Pratt some screentime.

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Keats or John (Pratt) initially doesn't want anything to do with helping her but when he discovers that she also has a robot friend (he has one and neither of them are supposed to by law) they become best buds because the story needs them to. They then go on a quest to rescue her brother who is not dead but is being held captive in a corporate headquarters in Seattle because of course he is.

So yeah, the story isn't the best as you can probably tell from my cynical synopsis of it. However, I don't think that this movie deserves the absolute battering it is getting on the review sites and I can't really understand why that is. Ok, so this isn't some novel idea or anything particularly groundbreaking but it is entertaining, comical, and some of the action is pretty damn good as well.

This is an absolutely fantastic movie to kind of pay attention to and when things get loud, to look at the screen and catch the really good action.

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I suspect there could possibly be some sort of Hollywood beef going on here and that the professional reviews have been intentionally skewed to "review bomb" this movie in its early days. One only need look at the difference between the critic score and the audience score to see that this might be the case

The film instantly shot to number one on streaming charts and this makes me very happy because I have been suspicious and upset with "professional critics" for a very long time. I'm reminded of a Rick from Rick and Morty line where he says "your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what makes you cheer" and one only need to remember that the critics absolutely loved a pedophile fever-dream called Cuties to understand what I am talking about.

People aren't listening to professional critics anymore and this is a good thing. Just like a mainstream media has become full of lies and promotional propaganda, I think the critics have some sort of agenda as well. I'm not sure what that agenda actually is, but I think there is a very good reason why most years, the films that win awards are all things that most people have never seen or even heard of.

Should I watch it?

Look, this is not some ultra-memorable movie that is going to go down in film history as something that created a new type of film genre that was beloved for generations. It's actually a pretty generic and predicable plotline that has been used countless times before. What makes it worth seeing is the 90's nostalgia, the subtle but not forced comedy elements, and the very impressive CGI.

This is something that I think most people will fine entertaining and I really enjoyed it even though there were many moments that I found very cringe but only because you can see the very predictable "twists" coming from miles away.

This is good brainless fun and sometimes, that is exactly what I am looking for. Put it on, I bet you like it.

_{This film can legally be streamed on Netflix, globally}