Studio: Vertigo Releasing
Director: S.K. Dale
Writer: Will Honley, April Maguire
Producer: Jeffrey Greenstein, Jonathan Yunger, Yariv Lerner, Les Weldon, Tanner Mobley
Stars: Megan Fox, Michele Morrone, Madeline Zima, Matilda Firth, Andrew Whipp, Jude Allen Greenstein
Review Score:
Summary:
While his wife is hospitalized, a frustrated father brings home a humanoid robot whose rogue AI allows it to manipulate his family.
Review:
One of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's best barbs came during a backstage bit at a Bon Jovi concert. The crass hand puppet taunted Jon Bon Jovi about his other career as an actor by asking if it was true he would be playing a vampire in an upcoming movie. After the famous frontman's confirmation, Triumph quipped in a vague Dracula voice, "Finally, a role that requires you to suuuuuck!"
It's easy to imagine someone taking a similarly snarky potshot at Megan Fox for the part she plays in "Subservience," a "Fatal Attraction" clone where her rogue robot replaces Glenn Close as the homicidal homewrecker. "Finally, a role that requires you to be an expressionless automaton dryly delivering dialogue from a pretty pout."
It doesn't take a veteran comedian like Triumph handler Robert Smigel to pull down such low-hanging fruit, just like Nostradamus isn't needed to predict exactly where "Subservience" will go each step of the way. Plowing through every routine plot point imaginable for both the vengeful mistress and AI run amok formulas, the movie is a laughable erotic thriller that's barely erotic and hardly thrilling at all.
In a nebulous near future where sophisticated bots take over every task from bartending and housekeeping to construction work and health care, Nick struggles to raise his young daughter and newborn son while his wife Maggie wastes away in a hospital waiting for a heart transplant. Desperate for help around the house, Nick purchases Alice, an advanced home-use bot whose adaptive AI allows Alice to rewrite her code on a whim according to her primary user's needs. How could this possibly go wrong?
Naturally, Nick has needs that involve more than making dinner or nannying the children. Despite trying as hard as he can to avert his gaze from the eye-catching curves of Alice's synthetic body, Nick ultimately succumbs to the attractive allure of her metal circuitry and begins a sexual affair with the android.
In one of the movie's most hilarious elements, and there are several, "Subservience" futilely tries to present Nick as a good guy who repeatedly resists Alice's passive attempts at seduction, but eventually gives in, apparently because the robot more or less entraps him. For the first of two sex scenes, Nick merely imagines being intimate with Alice, letting him off the hook a little since he's only indulging in a fantasy. For the second scene, Nick and Alice have sex for real, except Alice blindfolds him so he can picture her as his wife Maggie the entire time. "Subservience" seemingly wants us to have sympathy for Nick arguably being exploited, yet no matter how you slice it, he's still cheating on a dying wife lying in a lonely hospital bed, even if his side piece is also a piece of plastic.
It's absolutely hysterical to watch this character go through the usual motions of an unfaithful spouse scenario, e.g. attempting to break off the affair, hiding the truth from his wife, etc., and then remember he's interacting with silicon and wires the whole time. Whichever way you look at the situation, it's impossible to ever take the story seriously. Since I made a hacky joke at her expense earlier, maybe it's hypocritical to accuse "Subservience" of objectifying Megan Fox by essentially reducing her to a sentient sex doll who says, "I'm obedient, and I have no desires outside of fulfilling yours." Maybe there's also some moral grey area when it comes to infidelity with an artificially intelligent machine. But even from that less problematic perspective, how can one not laugh at the notion that this man ruined his life, and got more than one person killed in the process, because he schtuped something that was delivered to his doorstep in a cardboard box?
For an ultra-brief moment, "Subservience" whispers a suggestion that these bots could be a metaphor for migrant labor or an underrepresented minority. Then it's immediately back to the by-the-book banality of Alice's programming going haywire, putting Nick's family in danger for reasons the robot cannot understand since she's incapable of feeling the jealous emotions required of her character's role.
The person's name escapes me, but now I'm reminded of another comic who once did a routine about Chucky not being scary because he's a doll, and you can simply solve his threat with one swift kick from your foot. There's a scene in "Subservience" where Nick reboots Alice via the Power button on the nape of her neck, proving he knows how to turn her off. So why in the world does he attempt to reason with a robot and let her terrorize his wife and children when a quick press from his forefinger will end it all immediately? Come to think of it, a simple press of the Power button will make "Subservience" go away too. Like Nick's predicament, maybe that's the best course of action for everyone involved.
Review Score: 30
Plowing through every routine plot point imaginable, the movie is a laughable erotic thriller that's barely erotic and hardly thrilling at all.