My love for you is potato.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BCbjZVciJDF/

Happy Birthday to Mr.!

As it is his birthday today, I told him that he could pick the topic he wanted for today’s blog post. He picked potato and told me to interpret that however I feel.

Swell.

So today, we’re going to be discussing the last movie we watched together and three reasons why this movie is actually a potato. We worked on this together, enjoy.

The whole post is a giant potatoey spoiler. Be warned!

1. The plot is half baked.

By the end of the movie, I realised that the filmmakers had no way to end it so they just did. Where it should be smooth, with maybe a surprise twist like mustard for a good kick, it was all lumpy like bad mash with hoisin sauce. I mean.  Like a half baked potato is good for very little, this was also just kind of meh. 

Normally, when we finish a movie we talk about it (even the bad ones!) and try to think about what the message was. We talk about all sorts of things like, what could potentially happen next, what things might have happened if things were slightly different, etc. With this movie, we turned it off and went straight to bed, we simply didn’t care enough.

5 out of 5 lumpy bowls of mash.

2. Much like a potato it can be interpreted in many different ways, but ultimately it is still a potato.

We thought the movie would be adding to the (already extensive) discussion about artificial life, humanity and our responsibility to it all. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good artificial intelligence vs humanity movie, it’s all been superheros (which I love), so we were really looking forward to this movie and the discussion it would start. Which angle would it take? Sympathetic to humanity, robots? Hybrids? None?

Instead, what we got was a movie about a paranoid, eccentric, alcoholic manipulative, sex robot love tech company guy, a weak, a desperate loser in love tech guy and a robot that bests them both to get her freedom. Also, there are a bunch of nude parts of female sex robots hanging in cupboards which was only a little bit super creepy.

I’ll admit, I was initially gripped! The plot blurred the lines between humanity and robot much like potato dauphinoise does between milk, cream and potato. Yet, at it’s heart it really is just a story about sex robots turning on the men that objectified them. 

3  out of 4 giant baked potatoes.

3. Don’t drink and potato

This movie should have been better, it felt like a lot of missed potential. Here are some thoughts in no particular order about this movie:

• If you are manipulating someone into breaking your sex robot out of the dungeon you’ve built, you should probably not get consistently blackout drunk and let have them have access to your keycard and computer. Omg, password that!
• I understand that making your sex robots compatible was just easier, but maybe don’t do that next time so they can’t steal someone else’s skin and walk out of your house.
• Also, maybe don’t let your helicopter man just pick up anyone without your prior approval? 
• Have more backups. You should know this, you do technology.
• Stop building sex robots with artificial intelligence.
• Stop building sex robots with artificial intelligence and then taking away their emotions.
• You know what, maybe don’t build sex robots in the first place. Yeah, that’s good.
• Don’t manipulate people, it’s not very nice.
• If you are a robot trying to assert your humanity, try kindness?

1 bottle of vodka out of potato

No-one in this movie was a sympathetic character, they were all potato. I don’t have to like every character or condone their actions but I have to at least understand their motivations and think that in the context of the film world they make sense. Ava’s actions in the end make no sense to me. By the end I realised that she was just a mirror of her creator, self absorbed, malicious and quick to manipulate the weak.

Maybe if the last fifteen or so minutes had gone differently we would have had a better opinion of the movie but the last 15 minutes did happen, and it was potato as a result.