Monday, February 21, 2022

Finch (2021)

IMDb plot summary: On a post-apocalyptic Earth, a robot, built to protect the life of his creator's beloved dog learns about life, love, friendship and what it means to be human.
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Starring Tom Hanks, Caleb Landry Jones, and Marie Wagenman.

Finch stars Tom Hanks as our lone protagonist, one of the few remaining survivors after a solar flare and an EMP killed all electronics and made being outside in the sun impossible and deadly. Finch knows that he is dying of radiation poisoning and decides to make a robot to take care of his dog after he has passed on. Together, he, the robot, and the dog make their way toward the West Coast to see the Golden Gate Bridge before Finch dies. This movie is such a strange combination of tones. You have this genuinely disquieting post-apocalyptic story that feels not too terribly distant from the world we're in now, and then we have a fully sentient alive robot that feels more like we're leaning into 1980s children's adventure movies, and then on top of that it's a sentimental "man traveling with a child story." None of these pieces really fit together nicely for me, especially the last, which usually made me roll my eyes every time the robot would say something expectedly precocious and wise. There are definitely better "last man alive" stories and better "robot and man" stories. This one is mostly just cringe-y.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Finch < Monsters
Finch < War of the Buttons (1994)
Finch < Scrooged
Finch > Chicken Little
Finch > Outsourced
Finch > Basic
Finch < VeggieTales: The Star of Christmas
Finch < Five Children and It
Finch < No Reservations
Finch < The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Finch < The Princess and the Goblin
Finch < The Spy Next Door
Final spot: #3144 out of 3530, or 11%.

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