“The Electric State” partial poster featuring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown.
The Electric State — Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt’s new film from Anthony and Joe Russo — is new on Netflix this week. Is the sci-fi adventure a shock to the system for critics?
Rated PG-13, The Electric State is directed by the Russo brothers from a screenplay by their Avengers scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.
The official logline for the Netflix original movie reads, “Set in the aftermath of a robot uprising in an alternate version of the ’90s, The Electric State follows an orphaned teenager who ventures across the American West with a cartoon-inspired robot, a smuggler, and his sidekick in search of her younger brother.”
Brown (Stranger Things, Enola Holmes, Damsel) stars as the orphaned teenager, Michelle, while Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World trilogies) stars as the smuggler, Keats. Anthony Mackie (Captain America: Brave New World) voices Keats’ wisecracking robot, Herman.
Based on the hit graphic novel by Simon Stålenhag, The Electric State begins streaming on Netflix on Friday. The film also stars Ke Huy Quan, Jason Alexander, Giancarlo Esposito, Stanley Tucci and Woody Norman, while Woody Harrelson, Brian Cox, Jenny Slate and Alan Tudyk voice robot characters in the film.
According to Total Film (aia Yahoo!) and Space online, The Electric State had a production budget of $320 million before marketing costs.
Rotten Tomatoes critics aren’t finding much value in The Electric State thus far, and have collectively given the film a 23% “rotten” rating based on 22 reviews.
What Are Individual Critics Saying About ‘The Electric State’?
David Rooney is among the top critics on RT who give The Electric State a “rotten” review. In his take on The Electric State for The Hollywood Reporter on RT, Rooney writes, “The film is busy to a degree that grows more and more assaultive. But it’s neither funny nor exciting. Like so many streaming originals, The Electric State seems less a real movie than an imitation of one.”
Also giving The Electric State a “rotten” review on RT is Variety’s Courtney Howard, who writes, “Directors Joe and Anthony Russo surprisingly undervalue their source material’s blueprint, turning author Simon Stålenhag’s salient, bleak thriller into a whimsical, sanitized mess of mimeographed ideas from a handful of far better cinematic inspirations.”
In his “rotten” review of The Electric State for the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw writes on RT, “There’s no soul, no originality, just a great big multicolor wedge of digital content.”
Among the few top critics giving The Electric State a “fresh” review on RT is Robbie Collin of the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, who writes how the film is “so beautifully designed … with both its flesh-and-blood performers and the larger world, that I defy you to watch more than five minutes without wishing that your flatscreen was the size of a house.”
John Nugent of Empire Magazine also gives the movie a “fresh” review on RT, writing, “The Electric State loses some of the quiet profundity of the original text, but as a breezily watchable retrofuturistic jolly, it has just enough juice.”
Since the film does not begin streaming until Friday, there is no audience rating available yet on RT’s Popcornmeter.
The Electric State arrives on Netflix on Friday.
Read the full article here