Starring Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Glenn Close

Written and Directed by Benjamin Cleary

Apple+, out now

When a loving husband and father is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he’s presented with a controversial solution to replace himself with a carbon copy clone.

You know when you have an idea, and it’s a great idea, a really great idea? It’s an idea worthy of the best of Philip K Dick, right up there with Total Recall/We Will Remember It For You Wholesale or Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner?  It’s that good! It’s a premise that has the potential of a nuclear fusion reactor to power two hours of amazing story telling… and then…

…and then…

…you squander it on two hours of dreary, worthy sentimental self indulgence, that never gets beyond that premise?

Yeah, that.

Check out the tagline at the head of this review. Cameron (Mahershala Ali) is an all round lovely chap, and he’s dying, and he can replace himself with a clone to save his family a load of angst, and kindly Glenn Close (who is not sinister in any way) gives him the technology to do it… but do we get to explore the consequences of that? No. Ali spends the next ninety minutes whingeing and whining and worrying – and guess what? His clone gets to whinge and whine and worry in duplicate.  Which is appropriate for a clone, when you think about it.

I guess, in reality, worrying about being replaced by a clone is fair enough, it’s what any of us would do, but that doesn’t make this a good film, because by dwelling on his indecision and regret the movie never gets beyond its initial premise.

I want to see the clone in action. Does it go wrong? Or is Cameron not the goody two shoes we think we know? Does Cameron have guilty secrets that the clone uncovers and tries to rectify? What if his equally flawless wife (Naomie Harris) isn’t so flawless? Or how about his kid turning out to have an unhealthy relationship with narcotics or firearms or the dark web?

Spoiler alert… nothing so vaguely interesting. There isn’t a single story beat or reveal that adds to anything we learn in the first five minutes of this film.

Verdict: This is a film without twists or turns. It’s sickly, sentimental and deserving of the Academy Award for wasted opportunity of 2021. 4/10

Martin Jameson