Review of Big Bug (2022)
Seen in 2022.
In the year 2050, would-be lovers, former spouses and neighbours are trapped with dubiously loyal but antiquated robotic servants in a rogue cyborg uprising.
Jeunet sans Caro squeezes good production design out of a modest budget by keeping all of the action inside a locked suburban villa, and most of it in the living room, but the plot is a dull uchronian rehash. The underlying memes go all the way from The Bicentennial Man (1976) via Robocop (1987) to 2022’s conversations about COVID-19 (“COVID-50”), invasive advertising, and a less witty version of “Automated Customer Service” (2021). This jumble of futurisms resembles the main character’s collection of useless antiques. It is intellectually empty, more so than Mood Indigo (2013), and less beautiful. Not even the surface plot comes together in this static pageant, which feels more like a play than a movie. The workmanship is still charming and the timeline makes more sense than The Orbital Children (2022).
References here: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).