Mother/Android (Hulu streaming 2021) As much as we always love watching the gifted young actress Chloe Grace Moretz, we end up frustrated that she can't break out of off-the-rails, lower-tier fanboy stuff like "Shadow In The Cloud" and this movie.......a slow dreary re-hash of standard post-apocalypse tropes that everyone's suffered through before......(In 'The Terminator', its various sequels and endless imitators.)
CGM, fiercely committed to her craft as any A-list star, never delivers anything less than a finely skilled 100 per cent commitment to whatever role she lands in......and her work here, as it usually does, furnishes the movie with a sheen of quality that it doesn't much deserve.
Playing Georgia, a girl who's been newly impregnated by her boyfriend Sam(Algree Smith) she faces the kickoff of an apocalypse begun when the the world's Androids (like the replicants of 'Blade Runner') go rogue and slaughter humans across the globe. (Yep, this is the the near-distant future we're talkin' about here, where we're all using the humanoid Mr. Robotos as handy-dandy servants....)
But don't hold your breath waiting for Ridley Scott or James Cameron-type wham-bam action or any visual prowess.....this film settles down into a long, long depressing shlep for Sam and Georgia when they undertake a dangerous quest on foot to reach Boston, supposedly a refuge and haven from the rampaging robotic hordes.
None of the grim proceedings that ensue here are particularly perceptive, exciting or entertaining, since everyone's seen them trotted out in other films, over and over again. But that doesn't stop Chloe Grace Moretz from giving a practically awards-worthy performance as a character pushed to the very limits of human endurance.
If a lesser actress had fronted this movie, we wouldn't ever waste this much space describing it. So if you're a fan of CGM, you'll most surely want to check this out. She's reliably awesome, but 'Mother/Android' itself reeks of warmed-over post-apocalyptic cliches and never rises above a 2 star (**) effort.
And here's hoping Moretz eventually connects with a quality script and director so we can stop wishing for a time when her projects and her talents finally synch up........
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