I remember the opening minutes setting the tone of being kinda underwhelming with a few random sparks here and there. The Funki commercial, which starts pretty nice and realistic, but then they have the furby bots speak some funny quips, and it's pretty weak tea comedy. Then onto the family car ride and they're really juicing these slippery road conditions hard and clumsily. Then onto the robot lab, and all of that clumsy stuff with the boss interrupting their M3GAN tinkering and her clunky flame out. This movie seems content to play things extremely broad.

I kept getting surprised how low the bar was being set in this flick. The AI programming and the capabilities and the strength and that stuff are fully glossed over and just fall under the catch-all umbrella of "robot stuff", where roughly anything is possible. The toy company workings are ridiculous. The stuff with the boss guy usually sucks hard. Our main little orphan girl gets a little squished by the weight she has to carry. That bit with the old bully at the school visit in the forest is some low-brow low-cal horseshit. Nail gun bullets and power washer on the neighbor lady. The therapist parts and Williams somehow learning to become a great aunt/parent. One wimpy part after another.

But there are sparks of fun that salvage this sputtering jalopy. Anytime M3GAN gives the pissed off annoyed look at somebody, it's a funny little beat, knowing she's about to go off. Or when Allison Williams is trying to get M3GAN under control and M3GAN's basically "pffsh, fuck that noise." Or just her breaking into song like a Disney movie or telling the kid to friggin flush already. Those fun bits are a bit few and far between, but there's just enough to barely convince me to round up. There's worse stuff out there that's kind of adjacent to this flick. Plenty of clunk in the big finale too. James Cameron knew better than to put Newt in the power loader in ALIENS. This dumb movie on the other hand is like yeah sure, that tyke would probably be great at it too, cuz of like apps n Candy Crush and stuff. smh