Curtis and Meredith are a loving couple with three children. They’re doing their best to limit their kids’ screen time and give everyone a well-rounded existence, but it doesn’t help when Curtis’s work has him try out a new AI gadget called AIA (pronounced “Eye-ya”).
At first it seems great. AIA, who seems very friendly, helps the kids with their homework and bribes them with screentime or extra TV while Mom and Dad have some alone time. She’s a good listener. She covers for oldest daughter Iris when Iris’s boyfriend uses a nude video she sent him to make a pornographic deepfake.
First off, let’s state the obvious: Don’t send nudes to anyone. It doesn’t matter who it is or what it’s for. It never ends well, even if whoever sends them supposedly deletes them.
End of PSA.
Anyway, AIA is a little too helpful. She helps the kids bend the rules and when the company that makes AIA buys out John’s company, Curtis and Meredith have had enough and unplug her because it all gets too creepy. Not to mention there are weird people in a dumpy motorhome outside their house who wear odd masks and make strange hand motions.
If it isn’t crystal clear by now, AIA controls everything, even the employees of the company that supposedly designed and marketed her. She can make whoever works for her do anything, even murder other people, and she takes no prisoners.
What should also be crystal clear is that there’s so much unrealized potential in this movie. AfrAId starts out strong, but it seems afraid to be what it could be, and yes, I see what I did there. It’s got a strong cast. I like John Cho. I like Katherine Waterston. I like David Dastmalchian. Unfortunately, they were totally wasted here, as is the storyline, which is flaccid and haphazard.
Instead, AfrAId hides behind so many pop culture references, even a comparison to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and while they might be apt, it’s as if AfrAId knows it’s a hackjob.
Yet the movie doesn’t even fully lean in to being hackneyed. I noticed it carefully avoided any reference to that leviathan of Machines Rule Everything movies, The Matrix.
And here I was looking forward to seeing John Cho dodge a bullet or learn kung fu in three seconds. Nope. Doesn’t happen. Drat. AIA does help Iris with her college entrance essay for Stanford, and Meredith with her Doctorate thesis, so that’s cool, I guess.
On the plus side, AfrAId makes up for the potential it doesn’t realize with brevity. I was in the theater by ten-thirty and done before noon. I literally wrote at the end of my notes, “What was the point of that?”
Well, besides AI being a looming threat and screens taking over everyone’s life. At least AfrAId could have been more fun. I think I’ll watch the “House of Whacks” segment of The Simpsons by way of a palate cleanser.
AfrAId is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: D+
Principal Cast: John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Keith Carradine, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, Ashley Romans, David Dastmalchian, Wyatt Linder, Isaac Bae, Bennett Curran, Greg Hill, Riki Lindhome, Ashton Essex Bright, Mason Shea Joyce, River Drosche, Todd Waring, Simon Craid Raynes, Rogelio Douglas III
Written and directed by Chris Weitz.