On February 22, the official premiere of the sci-fi rom-com “My Robot Double,” starring Jack Whitehall and Shailene Woodley, took place in the Ukrainian box office. The plot of the film is based on the short story The Robot Who Looked Like Me by Robert Sheckley from the 1973 collection. In this review we tell you how love, death and robots are mixed in the film and how interesting it is to watch it all.
Pros:
cute couple of heroes; the actors interact well in the frame; the courage of the local authors; some really good jokes; interesting concept borrowed from the original story by Robert Sheckley
Minuses:
the banality of the plot as a romantic comedy; lazy implementation, which manifests itself in the fact that the comedy does not always make you laugh, and the romantic component is extremely weak and does not evoke a response from the audience; overall low ambition of the project
“My Robot Double” / Robots
Genre sci-fi romantic comedy
Directed by Anthony Hines, Kasper Christensen
Starring: Jack Whitehall, Shailene Woodley, Paul Rust, Paul Jurewicz, Nick Rutherford
Premiere cinemas
Year of release 2023
IMDb website
In 2032, the United States begins to widely use robots as laborers. But the handsome and wealthy Charles found a better use for his illegal android twin Ch-2. While the slacker spends his days at the monitor playing first-person shooters, his mechanical copy not only goes to work and washes dirty laundry, but also meets girls, some of whom consider Adam Sandler films to be classics. After a series of dates, when it comes to the final base, this is where our frantic hero-lover comes into play.
One day, Ch-2, in search of another victim, comes across the stunning beauty Elaine. The Android works according to the usual pattern, and the day is approaching when the girl invites Charles to her home. But due to an unfortunate mistake, a robot double of the guy ends up at this party, and not himself, and the next day it turns out that he has disappeared altogether. To find out what happened, the hero meets with Elaine and learns that she is using her own double to achieve selfish goals. Now the unfortunate deceivers are forced to join forces to find their copies that stole their lives. The film reaches Ukrainian cinemas with a huge delay: its world premiere took place in May last year. Moreover, February 22 seems a strange date for the release of a rom-com, given that Valentine’s Day passed a week earlier. But we have what we have.
Already in the debut scene, the directors and screenwriters of the film, Borat co-author Anthony Hines and Casper Christensen, deliver a witty satire on Donald Trump’s immigration policy and throw a pebble into Elon Musk’s garden. But after this, the satirical fervour sharply fades away. It is obvious that the creators did not set themselves ambitious goals to satirize political, technological or any other important aspect. Their main task was to entertain and make the viewer laugh, and they managed it about 50/50.
One thing Hines and Christensen cannot be accused of is a lack of courage. After all, making a film in 2023 with two white heroes (four in total, it turns out), where there was no place even for minor characters representing LGBT people, where a man treats women like trash, and a woman turns out to be just a mercantile bitch, is not progressive for you low-fat rom-coms from some Netflix.
In this context, “My Robot Double” seems to have been filmed in the 2000s, and then for some unknown reason ended up on the shelf until it was accidentally discovered and released into the world. It’s a pity that this time capsule factor is not able to significantly influence the weak script and its frankly lazy implementation.
The film also has a lot of jokes on the verge of a foul, which is also quite a rare occurrence in modern romantic comedies, because the times of projects like “Good Luck, Chuck!” (2007), with its nudity and politically incorrect humor, are long gone. Some of the gegs shoot, others remain indifferent. There’s a scene where a robot shaves its owner’s intimate area, and it’s kind of humorous. There’s an episode where an uncontrollable sexy android tries to spank Charles’ ass, and it really brings a smile to his face.
Jack Whitehall and the star of the teen dystopia “Divergent” Shailene Woodley interact well on camera, but the script does not allow them to fully express themselves both comedic and romantically. Towards the end, the actress will appear in a bold erotic image of a pseudo-high school student – in high heels, a T-shirt, a miniskirt, stockings and two perky ponytails. Shailene’s fans definitely shouldn’t miss this.
If we talk about any borrowings from the original story by Robert Sheckley, then they are minimal. Hines and Christensen allowed themselves to take only its plot basis, the names of the main characters, and that’s all. The motives of the characters and their behavior are fundamentally different from what was in the original source. And certainly no one was going to kill anyone there, unlike the two fools from the film.
My Robot Doppelgänger is a daring, but still sterile, road-movie/sci-fi romantic comedy that offers mostly flat humor and a weak romance.
And the tape once again reminds us of our dependence on gadgets, which you can always read about on the virtual pages of ITC. In the end, just like robots.
Conclusion:
“My Robot Double” may, with a stretch, claim your attention as a one-time evening entertainment, but the viewing pleasure will be extremely modest.
