Lisa Johnson Mandell’s The Creator review says the special effects are brilliant and and the design superb, but the plot is so full of puzzling holes it’s hard to embrace.

The Creator sets up impossibly high hurdles for itself from the very beginning—it wants us to believe that AI robots are good and Americans are bad.

At a time when people are suffering from serious anxiety over AI taking over their jobs and possibly their lives in less than a decade, these filmmakers actually want us to root for the ultimate bad guys? I think not.

The premise is far more complicated than it needs to be: Fast forward to 2065, when the U.S. is at war with A.I. because it blew up Los Angeles. The U.S. seems to be winning that war, with the last serious holdouts nestled in “New Asia,” which is intentionally designed to evoke Viet Nam.

John David Washington plays Joshua, a former special opps agent with a couple of prosthetics (that likely have some AI technology in them). He is recruited find and destroy the original source of all the AI, which is cleverly hidden in a ring-headed robot with the face, voice and demeanor of an innocent child. What monster could destroy an innocent child?

About those ring heads— for some reason, all the most advanced and human-like AI robots have huge rings that you could poke a puppy through, in the back of their heads at the top of their necks. This marks them as robots, and makes them so much less sympathetic. If the robot creators are so savvy, why don’t they cover those darn rings up with neck-like prosthetics, making them look entirely more human, and therefore more difficult for real humans to dispose of?

There may have been an explanation of this, but I missed it in the the bland stew of a plot, cooked up with references to just about all the futuristic robot movies that’s ever been made.

And those never-ending, staggeringly redundant chase/escape scenes became mind numbing after awhile, so it’s easy to lose focus and miss a few plot points director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla, Rogue One: a Star Wars Story) doubtless thought were imperative.

It’s a shame that the characters played by talented actors Gemma Chan, Allison Janney and Ken Watanabe were not given more dimension or screen time. They could have given the movie more soul.

As it is, it feels as if the film was created by the AI it so ardently champions. Technically, it’s a sight to behold. But on a human and emotional level, it’s pointless and empty.

Lisa Johnson Mandell’s The Creator review says the special effects are brilliant and and the design superb, but the plot is so full of puzzling holes there’s very little substance.

Rated PG1-13

2 Hours 13 Minutes

If this The Creator review encourages you to go online and rustle up some tickets, find them on Fandango.com.

Lisa Johnson Mandell’s The Creator review says the special effects are brilliant and and the design superb, but the plot is so full of puzzling holes it’s hard to embrace.