Superintelligence is trying to be too many things it just continuously fails be. It’s a bog standard AI Becomes Intelligent film, it’s a romantic comedy without a lot of convincing romance, and it tries – and I do mean tries – to be a wacky comedy.

The film stars Melissa McCarthy as a (version of a) average person living (a version of) an average life who finds out one day all the computer systems in the world have suddenly gained sentience… and the newborn AI wants to learn about humanity from her.

One corner of this film is a romantic comedy with Bobby Cannavale. And, look, I like both of these actors so I know they are capable… but either the witty repartee they were written was just bad or they have no capability of onscreen filtration or chemistry. As a romcom, it fails because the couple – despite how hard they try (and they try) – just don’t click. Which is a mess for a film that spends so much time ramming them together.

So if the Rom part doesn’t’ work, how about the Com? No, for the most part, the comedy is just desperate. It’s not particularly funny but, more to the point, it always feels inserted. Like, “now is the time for the laugh” says the AI that wrote the script. It doesn’t often flow naturally from the story or the characters. It was forced and desperate and unconvincing. Which, sad to say, is getting a little too typical for McCarthy.

So that leaves whether or not this is a good version of the “Computer gains Artificial Intelligence” story… and that’s the strongest part of the movie but, even with that minor accolade, there’s nothing original to it. There’s just nothing even remotely original or surprising or not 100% predictable about how this plot works. Which would be a bigger crime if the movie really cared but it’s so busy failing at its two other corners for any of it to matter.

The only reason I give this one an event decent score of any kind is, I guess, they are trying and it wasn’t horrendously boring. It was desperate and sad and predictable and, yes, occasionally it got draggy, but it wasn’t completely unwatchable. And I’m grading on a curve here.

Score: 68