WITH his wife sick in hospital, young children, and a demanding job to keep him busy, one struggling dad decides that the answer to all his problems is purchasing his very own AI Megan Fox.
I mean, in an ideal world, wouldn’t we all have one?
Subservience, now on Netflix, stars Fox as a lifelike android named Alice, who helps with the housework, and anything else her ‘primary user’ needs a hand with around the place.
If you need bannisters fixed, young infants rocked to sleep, or a little bit of what you fancy, Alice is your gal.
As a soulless automaton, the Transformers star is perfectly cast. She plays a pouty artificially intelligent housekeeper with relish.
Fox was brilliant as a demonically possessed high school student in the cult classic Jennifer’s Body, but there isn’t much call for a similarly red-hot performance here. Inert cyborg does nicely.
And gents, if you’re getting notions, the moral of this story is you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Taking care of her muddling master Nick (Michele Morrone) and his family soon isn’t enough for this hottie bottie, which ends in a real electrical storm.
After a reboot, Alice suddenly becomes self-aware and wants everything its new family has to offer, including the affection of its owner.
Technology is far from perfect, as we all know, and as luck would have it, this mechanical marionette is a couple of fuses short of a circuit breaker. This becomes clear when Alice shows that she is more than willing to spill blood for Nick’s love, which puts ailing wife Maggie (Madeline Zima) in a spot of bother.
Subservience, turns out to be a by-the-numbers man vs machine sci-fi romp. Even with brain switched to off, and eyes set to leer, it’s hard to get past this film’s many defects.
(2/5)
