Based on a graphic novel, this enormo-budget Netflix sci-fi adventure from the Russo brothers offers an alt-history in which a robot uprising led to war with humans with a tech-fused victory for mankind. Millie Bobby Brown is set on a cross-country quest to find her long-believed-dead brother with a kooky comic-strip sidekick robot and black-marketeer-with-a-heart Chris Pratt in tow. Stanley Tucci does effective work as an understated villain here, Brown is her dependable self and Pratt delivers more of his roguish wisecracking. The integration of the extensive and high-end CGI work is stunningly seamless in its worldbuilding and robot characters, again demonstrating what can be achieved on-screen with the big bucks, and the 1994-set tech influences works well. The actual story, however, is very anaemic and stretched quite thinly over two hours plus. It is visually rich and there is no doubting some of the imaginative/creative ideas on display, but the film itself is very scattershot in terms of both genre (thriller, comedy, sci-fi, speculative fiction, Western, coming-of-age) and audience targeting and - perhaps unforgivably for a film of this magnitude - it is also rather dull at times.
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