REVIEW: Surrogates (2009)
Surrogates
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 88 minutes
Starring: Bruce Willis
My rating: 1.5 stars
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Surrogates disconnects from the audience by forcing actors to act like the robot characters they’re supposed to be.
That didn’t make sense. Neither did this movie.
How many of you like to watch an actor stiffly move about and exhibit little-to-no emotion when delivering lines? I may as well have been watching two computers talk to each other for 88 minutes. It probably would have been just as entertaining.
Surrogates is not a good movie. But with this, and Gamer before it, we’re seeing Hollywood start to produce films about humanity’s disconnect through technology. And yes, I agree, but the multiple sporadic glow of cell phones sprinkled throughout the audience led me to believe that no one really cares about watching a film about this disconnect.
A surrogate is a robot machine with near-perfect human movement. They are controlled through censors attached to human brains. A person can buy a surrogate and use it to go out in the real world. The surrogates transmit the images and only good sensations back to the user. The bad feelings are somehow blocked.
One day a human dies while attached to a surrogate that is murdered. It is the first time this has happened. Bruce Willis plays a cop trying to uncover why the human died, who killed him and what to do about it.
Meanwhile there are rogue humans who refuse to participate in surrogacy. They are fighting against the increasingly large number of surrogates. Think of them as Native Americans during America’s expansion.
The journey forced Willis to question morality, humanity and his role in the universe. Sounds interesting, right?
It’s not, and the reason is because Willis is one of very few “live” people in the movie. The rest are surrogates and deliver lines in monotone, never cry, never show emotion, and barely can raise their voices. It all makes for a boring – and I mean boring – movie.
Audiences go to the movies to feel something. Surrogates succeeds in that. It made me feel tired, sleepy, apathetic and like I was wasting my time.
Do you know what ‘Second Life’ is? It’s a virtual world in which a person controls an avatar. This avatar lives a life like any other person, except they can fly (I think) and build things. Overall it’s a giant waste of time, producing almost nothing. I feel about it the same way I did about the people obsessed with ‘Sim City’ and now ‘Farmville.’
Surrogates brings those programs to live. And it’s as boring on screen as it is playing it. Why is it that in Surrogates and Gamer do only fat guys use these things? It’s never a beautiful woman controlling a beautiful woman.
Perhaps that’s the true message: Inside every beautiful woman is a huge fat schlub. 1.5 stars.
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