Starring Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito, Brian Cox

Directed by Anthony & Joe Russo

Based on the illustrated novel, The Electric State, by Simon Stålenhag

An orphaned teen embarks on a quest with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother.

Popular myth has it that a bumble bee is such an ill-proportioned insect it is aerodynamically incapable of flight. This is obviously rubbish (not least because bubble bees can fly just fine, thanks very much) but I was reminded of this non-fact last night while wading through Netflix’s ungainly robot mash-up, The Electric State, waiting for this star-laden, overlong, confused, unfunny chimera of a movie to get off the ground.

Which it never did.

For some reason, we’re taken via an interminable set-up to an alternative 1990s where comical service robots have been exiled to a sort of desert exclusion zone following a war with the machines. However there are people now controlling their own robots through ‘neurocasters’ (grubby yellow headsets), hunting down other escaped robots for some reason that was never entirely clear… at which point I lost the will to live.

Anyway, in a storyline reminiscent of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time, Millie Bobby Brown has a super brilliant kid brother who’s been abducted by Stanley Tucci and is, for some reason or other, keeping all the bad robots going, or something…

Anyway, Millie’s wearing blonde hair extensions and is in foster care, when a robot turns up claiming to be her brother (sort of), who she thought was dead, and she teams up with Chris Pratt who’s also wearing an ill-fitting wig (why?), and has his own wise-cracking bot, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie) . However neither Pratt nor his robot say anything that could be remotely described as funny, unless perhaps you’re a bumble bee.

Sorry… I know none of this is making any sense, but you’ll be relieved to know that Woody Harrelson arrives voicing a robotic peanut and helps them find a doctor (Ke Huy Quan) who did a thing, and is now also downloaded to a 1990s PC with added legs.

Oh god… do you really want to know any more?

The shame about this movie is that the world of it has a certain quirky charm, like Transformers might be if Michael Bay had a sense of humour or style. But after nearly two and a quarter hours, there’s a battle and it ends.

Verdict: Apparently, The Electric State has done well for Netflix, so while some critics (i.e. me) might mistake it for the bumble bee of myth, unable to get off the ground, what do they know? Apparently it can fly just fine, thanks very much. 5/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com