And… wooo baby… I also went to see the surprise Keanu Reeves sci-fi flick Replicas. I say surprise because I didn’t see a trailer for the flick and I kept thinking, “that guy sounds like Keanu Reeves.” “Wait… that IS Keanu Reeves. What’s he doing in this flick?” Good question… I don’t have an answer. It’s a mystery…. Woah!
Replicas is a low budget 90s throwback sci-film about transferring minds between bodies and human cloning (among other things). Reeves plays a scientist who is trying to transfer the minds of dead soldiers into robotic bodies which isn’t work out. His wife is dubious about the ethics of the whole thing. When mom, dad, and their three adorable kids go on a road trip, they obviously crash and the whole family dies except dad. So what else is a grieving family man/mad scientist gonna do but gather up the corpses and get to work?
I’ll be frank… this is, by any objective measure, a really bad movie. It think its smart but is immensely, thunderingly stupid. It’s like “Baby’s First Sci-Fi” film in how it thinks its ideas are brilliant. This could have been an Outer Limits episode and might have been a decent Black Mirror episode if they spent more time on the script. The acting is bad (more on that) and there’s too much plot for too little story.
But, you know, I giggled my way throughout the flick… usually at the film’s expense. it’s so dumb and clueless – and occasionally it seems to know it – that you can’t help but chuckle at the whole thing. I mean, Reeves has his family’s bodies growing in vats in the basement and forgets to check his wife’s email or report his kids can’t come to school. So there’s a scene where he starts replying to texts… and he has to figure how to text his daughter’s “bae” that she can’t come make out with him this weekend because she’s “grounded till I’m 18!”. Can this be serious? The movie plays it straight-faced… but come on! They had to know? Right?
Plus there’s Keanu Reeves. God love him, Keanu Reeves is many things but a great emotive actor isn’t really one of them. Back in the 90s, he tried really hard to be a serious actor and it always came off a little goofy. But then he found his niche and has been perfectly fine for years. But this movie… woah. He’s back to his old Johnny Mnemonic roots. He is so wooden and unconvincing that you might even think he regrets taking this movie and really isn’t putting any effort into it… Huh….
And most of this is just the first half of the movie… him growing his family in vats and then using a separate technology to transfer their minds into the bodies. Then the movie turns into a Michael Crichton-like high-tech suspense thriller as the shady corporation he was working for turns out to be, you know, a shady corporation. AND THEY WANT THE ALGORITHM!!! because that’s a word they’ve heard before.
Hey, don’t see this movie, even if you’ve heard of it. Unless you are the kind of person who can enjoy laughing at clueless actors in clueless movies. If you can enjoy a good bad movie, this is in that vat of goofiness. If you have more taste and more things to do with your time, stay the hell away. This is – objectively and accurately – the worst movie of 2019 (as of January 11).
Score: 71