WifeLike is a flick that starts out like a teenager’s sex fantasy complete with all the boobs and butts you could leer at. And then it struggles to become something more, treading in overly familiar ground, reminding me of After Yang, Ex Machina, or Westworld… but always inferior in every way.

The flick is set in the near future where, if you can afford it, you can buy a replacement android wife if yours is killed (no mention of replacement husbands). A robot recovery agent gets just such a replacement… who slowly starts to experience memories she should not have.

I watched this hoping for an existential film about AI and consciousness… and that’s in the movie but on a pretty surface level. For well over half the flick, when it wasn’t playing like bad Skinemax, it was like a dozen other flicks about AI and robotics, only much, much, much more poorly paced.

And the pace never picks up – this movie is forever in molasses – but at least in the second half we get some nice twists and character revelations. It never really grows up much past babies first robotics story, but I give it some credit for trying.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter that it’s a pervy, leering sex fantasy and it doesn’t matter that it tries to be more than that… it’s simply too sluggish and plodding to care about.

Score: 66