When we first enter Next Gen's world, it has the gleam of the digital city in Ralph Breaks the Internet combined with the cute-styled robots and griminess of WALL·E. At first glance, it seems promising.
The inconsistencies set in quickly, though. While I can forgive the simplistic writing—it's a kids' film after all, despite the (bleeped) coarse language, though targeted at older kids—I can't ignore the technical plot holes. Chief among them: Why 7723 only has the ability to fly until after falling off the highway and breaking its memory? Obviously, if that didn't happen, it would remove the plot's linchpin. (There's no humanizing sacrifice in 7723 deciding to delete all its memories to defeat Ares if the memory core never gets damaged.) But that big hole got me to pay closer attention, and there are many more, smaller, holes scattered through the script. It's distracting.
What this film does do well: Illustrate why Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were a good idea. The robots in Next Gen are entirely too happy to harm a human on command. (This is understandable in-universe, of course, given who Justin really is.) But that's just an idle observation from one guy (me) who loved the Asimov references thrown into Portal 2 entirely too much.
Perhaps the biggest issue with this movie is that it's not a Pixar film. I know I wasn't too thrilled with Incredibles 2 (the last Pixar film I watched and reviewed), but there's no doubt in my mind that this script would have gained a lot more depth if Pixar had produced it. While I don't always like Pixar's animation style, the way they always build layers of meaning and sophistication into their scripts is hard to ignore. Movies made for kids don't have to be simplistic all the way down, but this one—frustratingly—kind of is.
Review by dgwVIP 10BlockedParent2019-07-06T03:34:43Z
When we first enter Next Gen's world, it has the gleam of the digital city in Ralph Breaks the Internet combined with the cute-styled robots and griminess of WALL·E. At first glance, it seems promising.
The inconsistencies set in quickly, though. While I can forgive the simplistic writing—it's a kids' film after all, despite the (bleeped) coarse language, though targeted at older kids—I can't ignore the technical plot holes. Chief among them: Why 7723 only has the ability to fly until after falling off the highway and breaking its memory? Obviously, if that didn't happen, it would remove the plot's linchpin. (There's no humanizing sacrifice in 7723 deciding to delete all its memories to defeat Ares if the memory core never gets damaged.) But that big hole got me to pay closer attention, and there are many more, smaller, holes scattered through the script. It's distracting.
What this film does do well: Illustrate why Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were a good idea. The robots in Next Gen are entirely too happy to harm a human on command. (This is understandable in-universe, of course, given who Justin really is.) But that's just an idle observation from one guy (me) who loved the Asimov references thrown into Portal 2 entirely too much.
Perhaps the biggest issue with this movie is that it's not a Pixar film. I know I wasn't too thrilled with Incredibles 2 (the last Pixar film I watched and reviewed), but there's no doubt in my mind that this script would have gained a lot more depth if Pixar had produced it. While I don't always like Pixar's animation style, the way they always build layers of meaning and sophistication into their scripts is hard to ignore. Movies made for kids don't have to be simplistic all the way down, but this one—frustratingly—kind of is.