Ever since she failed to nab a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her overly hyped performance in Hustlers a couple of years ago, Jennifer Lopez seems determined to never let such a thing happen again by choosing projects so dire that not even those schmucks behind the Razzies would go near them. That said, as bad as such instantly forgettable items as Marry Me, Shotgun Wedding, The Mother and This Is Me. . . Now, the visual accompaniment of her album of the same name that proved to be more lemon than Lemonade, those films feel like the salad days of Selena, Blood and Wine and Out of Sight in comparison to her latest, the deeply idiotic and vaguely offensive sci-fi dud Atlas. Set in the not-too-distant future, Lopez plays Atlas Shepherd (a moniker that seems to have been taken directly from a Clive Cussler name generator), the daughter of a brilliant scientist whose work in the field of artificial intelligence resulted in a seemingly perfect A.I. super-soldier dubbed Harlan (Simu Liu). Alas, one day, Harlan inexplicably went sideways and attempted to eliminate all of humanity with the help of fellow A.I. creations before disappearing. Now, nearly 30 years later, it appears that Atlas has turned up on an inhospitable planet planning another attack on humanity and although she is merely a systems analyst—albeit the one who theoretically knows the most about Atlas and what it might do—Atlas insists on going along on the mission to stop him led by Col. Elias Banks (Sterling K. Brown). Inevitably, the mission immediately goes off the rails and Atlas, stranded on the planet inside a robot suit governed by an A.I. system, dubbed Smith (the name generator must have been in the shop), that she instinctively doesn’t trust. However, Atlas must learn to get over her fears and embrace A.I. if she is to have any chance of stopping Harlan, saving humanity and returning home.
I suppose it is fitting that Atlas is centered around the subject of artificial intelligence—albeit one that tries to both-sides the issue in the most ineptly ham-fisted manner imaginable—since it certainly feels as if it was put together by an exceptionally buggy version of it. The screenplay by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite is a half-assed pastiche that has stolen nearly all of its central elements from other and better films (and when you are reduced to considering the likes of Virtuosity to be a superior bit of cinema, you have pretty much hit rock bottom) but has no clue of what to do with any of them to make them fresh or interesting as it builds to a stunning and shocking twist revelation that is undercut slightly be the fact that even people who have never seen a film before will have figured it out much earlier. Director Brad Peyton, whose name is now practically synonymous with tedious and instantly forgettable action extravaganzas (if there is some attempt out there to rehabilitate the reputations of the likes of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, San Andreas and Rampage, I do not want to hear about it) once again hacks his way to a quick paycheck in the laziest manner imaginable—after watching the indifferently executed CGI battles depicted here, you might almost find yourself yearning for the comparative visual verve of Zach Snyder. As for Lopez, even though she is the only actor on the screen for long stretches of time, this is one of the least memorable, going-through-the-motions turns of her entire career. There is not a single moment in the film where you get the sense that she is connecting with the material, the other characters or the audience. Watching her, you get the sense that as soon as she is done doing all of her contractually obligated promotions for Atlas, she will pretty much forget that it even exists after a week or to. My guess is that even her most devoted fans will be way ahead of her in that regard.
Babes, the directorial debut from Pamela Adlon, arrives in theaters on a wave of hype calling it the funniest movie of the year and while it may not be the instant classic that some have suggested it to be, it certainly comes closer to hitting that mark than anything I’ve seen in a while. Ilana Glazer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Rabinowitz, stars as Eden, a yoga instructor who ends up spending her Thanksgiving helping lifelong bestie Dawn (Michelle Buteau) when she goes into labor with her second child. Heading home on the subway that night with $500 worth of sushi in tow (don’t ask), she has a meet-cute with charming struggling actor Claude (Stephan James) that develops into a one-night stand that leaves her pregnant. Although Claude, as we soon discover, is definitively out of the picture, Eden decides to have the baby anyway—although she is hardly the model of maturity and estranged from the agoraphobic father (Oliver Platt) that is her only relative, she decides to go ahead with the pregnancy anyway on the assumption that Dawn and husband Marty (Hasan Minaj) will cheerfully serve as her much-needed support system. What she fails to consider is that Dawn—between the exhaustion of raising two small children (one who, thanks to Eden, has begun terrifying babysitters with behavior inspired by a viewing of The Omen) and the guilt of leaving the family to go back to work—is already on the edge and her annoyance with Eden’s unwillingness to make even the most basic of plans for someone ready to give birth (she makes plans for an elaborate prom-themed delivery but neglects to prepare her apartment for the new arrival) proves to be the one thing that might do the impossible and rupture their seemingly unbreakable bond.
Babes is being hyped as a grossout comedy about all the icky details that tend to get left aside in chronicles about the joys of impending motherhood and with good reason—I’ve seen plenty of movies over the years in which an expectant mother get her first look at the fetus growing inside of her but I do not immediately recall any where, like here, that same mother comes face-to-face with an amniocentesis needle that, based on its size and general creepiness, would seem more at home in an old Brian De Palma thriller. Although the film presents any number of outrageous jokes involving a wide variety of fluids, odors and the like, they work here not just because they are funny (though most of them are) but because they are being used to provide genuine insight into all of the phases—not just the ones that are greeting car-appropriate—that go into bringing a child into the world. More importantly, while the icky gags will no doubt be the thing that drives people into the theater, the film proves to be more interested in charting both the surprising evolution of the friendship between Glazer and Buteau (who establish an onscreen bond right from the start that convincingly suggests a long-standing relationship) as well as an exploration of the notion of family. Like a lot of recent comedies, Babes maybe runs a little too long for its own good but for the most part, it is a film that has a lot of laughs, a lot of heart and a lot of stuff that I will not mention in case you happen to be eating anything right now.