Reviewer Flickchart ranking: 3,390 / 5,719 (41%)
The Russo Brothers’ second Netflix film (after The Gray Man, 2022) lands with a $320 million price tag starring Chris Pratt and Netflix it girl Millie Bobby Brown (Enola Holmes, 2020). Is The Electric State able to captivate, or will it be another mega-dollar dud?
The film follows Michelle (Brown), an orphaned teen living in the remains of a rebuilding world after a devastating war with the machines. The battle was won by humanity when a tech billionaire (Stanley Tucci) created a technology that allowed people to upload their minds into drones. The humans defeated the machines and the robots were banished to the “exclusion zone.”
Michelle now resides with a neglectful and abusive foster parent (Jason Alexander), while the rest of the world has become dependent on the new drone tech, living in a largely virtual world. Michelle becomes a kind of emo-Luddite and teenage outsider. One day, she is visited by a cute robot named Cosmo, who convinces Michelle that her little brother is alive and is being held captive, somehow connected to the life of the robots. Along the way, they meet up with the wisecracking scavenger Keats (Pratt), a robo-mercenary played by Giancarlo Esposito (Abigail, 2024), a helpful scientist played by Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once, 2022), and a village of cute and quirky robots voiced by a wide variety of stars (Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Brian Cox, Jenny Slate, Colman Domingo, and the tireless Alan Tudyk).
The Electric State is a by-the-book sci-fi adventure that is more interested in being adorable than making a cohesive storyline. The Russo’s ask us to distrust advanced technology and the wealth and power that it provides, while also compelling us to sympathize with the more cuddly robots and hope for their continuation in our lives. The robots probably have something to do with immigration, but I don’t believe that point is well-delivered.
Millie Bobby Brown is a charming lead, while Pratt does his usual post-Parks & Rec performance. The Electric State is an overstuffed buddy film that lacks enough ideas to provide any purpose for following the romp through the fallen world. I was reminded of Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence (2001) in how the film unfolds, but the Russo’s never engage with their characters, following formulas and hoping a charismatic cast will do all the heavy lifting. It’s no more than an acceptable action comedy sci-fi yarn that will appeal to younger audiences and those hoping to tune out for a while.
