It is hard to describe how utterly joyless and devoid of imaginative ideas The Electric State is. Netflix’s latest feature codirected by Joe and Anthony Russo takes many visual cues from Simon Stålenhag’s much-lauded 2018 illustrated novel, but the film’s leaden performances and meandering story make it feel like a project borne out by a streamer that sees its subscribers as easily impressed dolts who hunger for slop.
Movie Reviews
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Strays’ on VOD, an Unapologetically Raunchy, Stupidly Funny Talking-Dog Flick
An alternate title for Strays (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) could be Look Who’s Saying F— Now. It’s the heartwarming story of a scruffy little dog who speaks with the voice of Will Ferrell, and dreams of returning home so he can gnaw on the gonads of the owner who abandoned him. You can just feel your heart about to burst, can’t you? Director Josh Greenbaum follows up his people-will-laugh-at-anything-during-a-global-pandemic comedy Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar with this crude, nasty, insanely R-rated, unabashedly scatological talking-animal adventure that eventually broke down my boundaries like a brawny stream of Rottweiler whiz to a snowbank. I’m better than this, you’re better than this, we’re ALL better than this, but it’s also OK if I, you and we laughed our asses off while watching it.
STRAYS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Reggie (Ferrell) is a Border Terrier, which is one of those absurdly photogenic little dogs who exist to nip at the heels of a kid, chasing a tennis ball for hours on sunny Saturday afternoons. So it’s all the more tragic that Reggie ended up with Doug (Will Forte), a sloppy, unemployed serial masturbator who doesn’t love his dog or himself or life or existence or anything, really. Doug’s ex-girlfriend loved Reggie, and when she finally wised up and dumped Doug, he kept the dog purely out of spite. Reggie doesn’t understand any of this; he interprets Doug’s abuse as love, and therefore has pledged his heart to this angry, self-hating loser. How devoted is Reggie? He thinks Doug’s multiple attempts to abandon him is a game, which Reggie wins every time he manages to follow his nose home from various far-off locales. Poor pup doesn’t realize he’s in a relationship that makes The Burning Bed look like a Hallmark rom-com.
Now, we could translate Reggie’s codependency as symptomatic of being a stereotypically loyal dog, and we wouldn’t be too far off-base. But we’ll soon learn that such naivete isn’t inherent to all canines, at least in this movie. Exasperated by Reggie’s fierce devotion, and angry that the pup accidentally broke his favorite bong, Doug drives a few hours to a city, drops him in a scuzzy vacant lot and speeds away. And now Reggie’s the dog equivalent of a fish out of water, a situation remedied by Bug (Jamie Foxx), a hardened Boston Terrier from the streets who teaches him the Way of the Stray, which is a phrase I made up, not the movie. It involves staking your claim to territory by urinating on things, knowing where you can get a hearty slice of dropped pizza, stuff like that. They befriend an Australian Shepherd named Maggie (Isla Fisher) and a Great Dane named Hunter (Randall Park), whose relationship to his Cone of Shame is kinda like Linus to his security blanket. The four dogs bond as a pack when they get drunk on garbage water and find some lovely inanimate objects to mount.
It’s probably not worth noting the romantic tension between Maggie and Hunter, evident by what’s happening with Hunter’s little red rocket down there, which isn’t little at all (I mean, he’s a Great Dane after all). It’s also probably not worth noting that Bug is in love with a couch he used to routinely desecrate during his time as a family pet, the details of which are revealed later in a tear-soaked flashback. But here I am noting these things anyway, as examples of this movie’s brand of comedy, which is on level with a squat toilet. Bug, Hunter and Maggie all look a little cockeyed at Reggie when he tells them his backstory, and about how he thinks Doug reciprocates his unconditional love. So they break the truth to him: Poor Reggie’s in an abusive relationship. In the light of this harsh reality, Bug and Hunter and Maggie vow, come hell or high water, to help Reggie make the long and arduous journey home so he can bite Doug’s dick off.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Babe: Pig in the City, Homeward Bound, Look Who’s Talking Now, the Marmaduke with Owen Wilson, Sausage Party and, perhaps for obvious reasons, Trash Humpers.
Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Reggie is a naif pooch who’s kinda the canine version of Buddy the Elf, and even though this is something Ferrell can do in his sleep, the shtick is, at least in this context, pretty funny.
Memorable Dialogue: Reggie envies the thing that Doug loves the most: “Sometimes I wish I was a penis!”
Sex and Skin: Does a Great Dane boner or a mutt mounting a garden gnome count?
Our Take: Strays is lowbrow and moronic, obsessed with poop and puke, crudely hacked together and seemingly written by and for prepubescent boys to sneak-watch when their parents aren’t paying attention. Its visual acuity is hampered by the limitations of working with a primary cast consisting of trained animals. It’s frequently stomach-churning, and the ickiest scenes tend to linger like the last drunk to stumble out of the party. For a while, I was unamused. Then I was surprised by the poignant manner in which Greenbaum handled the heartbreaking stories of how some of these dogs became strays, which skewed the film’s grossout factor from 95 percent to, well, about 94 percent.
And then, the needle drops on Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ during the movie’s big climactic sequence, and I roared and cackled and let it all out and wiped a few tears from my eyes and felt good about it. It happens: Sometimes you get blindsided by a slab of puerile, asinine comedy and you have no choice but to submit to it as your better judgment and notions of good taste expeditiously swirl straight down the crapper.
Prior to that, Strays struck me as a borderline-tolerable spoof of family-movie and revenge-flick tropes propped up by a clunky assemblage of cute-dogs-doing-ugly-things cognitive-dissonance gags. It indulges many cliches of road comedies, you know, the inevitable scenes where the protagonists accidentally ingest hallucinogenic drugs, get thrown in jail, etc. (narrative traps, I have to note, recently employed by Book Club: The Next Chapter – or was it 80 for Brady? I can’t tell these things apart anymore). But once in a while an inspired ending swoops in to salvage things, pushing them from marginal to watchable – and in this case, kind of almost maybe probably endearing, because what kind of j-hole doesn’t root for the well-being of lost dogs? Nobody’s going to accuse the movie of being a thoughtful examination of physical and emotional abuse, or a tender story about outcasts finding strength and affirmation in their newfound friendships. But it might just inspire some healthy, cleansing laughter, which you might not expect from a movie that’s essentially about dogs sniffing each other’s hindquarters.
Our Call: I liked this stupid-ass movie and I’m not going to apologize for it. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
While you can kind of see where some of the money went, it’s exceedingly hard to understand why Netflix reportedly spent upward of $300 million to produce what often reads like an idealized, feature-length version of the AI-generated “movies” littering social media. With a budget that large and a cast so stacked, you would think that The Electric State might, at the very least, be able to deliver a handful of inspired set pieces and characters capable of leaving an impression. But all this clunker of a movie really has to offer is nostalgic vibes and groan-inducing product placement.
Set in an alternate history where Walt Disney’s invention of simple automatons eventually leads to a devastating war, The Electric State centers Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), a rebellious teen orphan desperate to escape her abusive home. Like most kids around her age, Michelle’s world was turned upside down during the brutal human / robot conflict that began with thinking machines demanding equal rights as sentient beings. But whereas most of her peers lost loved ones specifically because of the war, an ordinary car crash is what tears Michelle’s family apart and leads to her being adopted by loutish layabout Ted (Jason Alexander).
With her parents and brilliant younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman) seemingly dead, Michelle doesn’t feel like there’s all that much to live for. Much like her chaotic adoptive home life, school feels like a prison to Michelle because of the way children are expected to learn everything using Neurocasters, bulky headsets that transport wearers into virtual realities. Though many people like Ted gleefully strap their Neurocasters on, the technology disgusts Michelle, in part because of how they were first created as tools to give humans an edge in the machine war.
Given how people still live in fear of being attacked by the few surviving robots sequestered in the Exclusion Zone, Michelle can’t fathom why other people are so game to tune the real world out. Michelle herself is constantly looking over her shoulder in case a bloodthirsty machine finds its way into her room. But when one of them actually does, she’s charmed by the fact that it looks like one of her favorite cartoon characters. And she’s shocked when it tells her (through canned catchphrases from the cartoon) that Christopher is actually alive.
Though Michelle’s new robot friend looks very much like one of Stålenhag’s illustrations, its vocal impairment makes it read as a cutesy spin on the live-action Transformers’ take on Bumblebee. As it urges Michelle to follow it on a mission to find Christopher, you can almost hear the Russos and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely patting themselves on the back for creating a character who encapsulates everything about The Electric State’s war-torn world. It’s a damaged thing that just wants to be seen as a person and given the chance to live its life in peace. Those details could have made for an interesting narrative if there were any more depth to them or if Brown could muster up even an ounce of chemistry with her CGI companion. But The Electric State is much more concerned with simply showing you as many of its broken machines as it possibly can.
Outside of a multitude of cultural references meant to remind you that it’s set in the ’90s, and shots of Neurocaster users lying passed out on the street like junkies, The Electric State never feels very interested in doing the kind of worldbuilding necessary to make movies like it work. Instead, it simply spells out that the inventor of the Neurocaster, Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), is a villain who wants Colonel Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) to capture Michelle’s robot. And Bradbury’s chasing after the pair gives the film a way to show how littered The Electric State’s world is with the rusted frames of machines destroyed during the war.
The movie becomes that much more of a slog once Michelle crosses paths with boring smuggler Keats (a profoundly charmless Chris Pratt) and his wisecracking robo-friend Herman (Anthony Mackie), who make a living selling things they scavenge from the Exclusion Zone. Unlike Brown’s Michelle, Pratt and Mackie actually do manage to come across as people who have lived through a sort of apocalypse and become much weirder due to their general isolation from the outside world. Their knowledge of the Exclusion Zone and access to vehicles makes them perfect to get Michelle and her robot to their destination. But the sheer number of jokes about Twinkies and Big Mouth Billy Bass (again, this is the ’90s) that The Electric State has Keats spit out is enough to make you root for Bradbury.
Image: Netflix
Part of the problem is that The Electric State is never all that funny, though the movie certainly thinks it is as it starts to introduce some of its more unusual robot characters like mail-bot Penny Pal (Jenny Slate), spider-like fortune telling machine Perplexo (Hank Azaria), and their leader, Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson). You can almost imagine The Electric State working if it were more focused on the lives of the pariah machines — all of whom are somewhat evocative of Sid’s horrific creations in Toy Story.
But rather than tapping into those characters’ potential, the movie spends its last third rushing headlong into tiresome action sequences that fall far short of what you would expect from such an expensive project. Ultimately, The Electric State leaves you with the distinct sense that Netflix greenlit it assuming that the Russo bros. + IP + a bunch of well-known actors would = a movie people would reflexively want to watch. But that math simply doesn’t add up, and this feels like an instance where you’d be much better off just reading the book.
The Electric State also stars Colman Domingo, Ke Huy Quan, Martin Klebba, Alan Tudyk, Susan Leslie, and Rob Gronkowski. The movie is now streaming on Netflix.
Story: After losing his eyesight during a botched operation in Kashmir, a soldier preparing to start a new life with his fiancée finds his world upended when two dreaded criminals enter their home looking for stolen diamonds.
Review: Written and directed by KD Sandhu (also featuring him as the antagonist Rolex), opens with a covert operation in Kashmir. A courageous soldier, Jaideep (Udhay Bir Sandhu), is gravely injured and left blind as the mission turns out to be a trap. He finds solace in a happy life with his fiancée, Jennifer (Farha Khan), who harbours a secret from her past. When her history resurfaces, it leads to tragic consequences, forcing Jaideep to confront his enemies despite his blindness.
While the premise holds promise, the film’s execution falls short. The narrative struggles with diluted storytelling and relies on gimmicky effects, failing to deliver an engaging experience. It attempts to maintain tension, particularly through action sequences between Jennifer and Rolex’s aide Sophia (Akanksha Shandil), but quickly loses momentum. The second half feels drawn out as Rolex and Sophia relentlessly torment Jaideep for the location of diamonds stolen from a terrorist syndicate. The connection between this and the Kashmir trap that cost Jaideep his career and vision remains inadequately explained.
The film’s central idea—a blind soldier trapped in his home with ruthless criminals, each trying to outwit the other—had potential. The script introduces mind games, with Jaideep attempting to manipulate Sophia against Rolex, but weak character development, exaggerated dialogues, and uninspired treatment dilute the impact. The eventual discovery of the diamonds feels farfetched.
Performances are largely unremarkable. Udhay Bir Sandhu, Farha Khan, KD Sandhu, and Akanksha Shandil are passable, with the two leading ladies executing action scenes effectively. Featuring York, Armenia, and other locales, Siddharth Akki Baiju, Arjun Kathuria, Pravesh Kumar, and Gautam B handle cinematography well, but Ujjwal Roy Chaudhary’s music fails to leave a lasting impression, as songs also pop up randomly.
Blindsided had a promising idea lost to flawed execution, making it a forgettable watch.
Movie Review
George Woodhouse doesn’t like liars. Shame he works with so many of them.
You see, George is an intelligence agent for the British government. A spy. And spies are in the business of keeping secrets—often lying to do so. But a spy’s job isn’t just about keeping secrets. It’s also about discovering them.
George is on the discovery side of spy craft. He’s become something of a legend for his skill in digging up dirty little secrets. He seems to know vices of everyone within his world, be they an intelligence target, a coworker or a family member.
All except Kathryn. She’s a formidable spy in her own right. A master of deception. An adept at espionage.
She also happens to be George’s wife.
Kathryn and George have a happy and committed marriage. They artfully navigate the relational pitfalls that accompany a profession such as theirs. Pitfalls that many of their colleagues have fallen into headlong. (George has the evidence to prove it.)
George adores Kathryn and trusts her implicitly. That’s why when a top-secret government weapon is stolen, and Kathryn is on the list of potential traitors, George hardly gives it a second thought. She wouldn’t betray her country, he thinks. More than that, she wouldn’t betray him. And there are plenty of other suspects.
But as the methodical George scrupulously searches for the truth, all evidence points to Kathryn as the culprit. Everything is called into question. Could his wife be a traitor? If so, does he even know her at all?
“When you can lie about everything,” George’s coworker muses about the effect of their clandestine profession, “how can you tell the truth?”
George Woodhouse doesn’t like liars. Shame he might be married to one.
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