Superintelligence review by Bobby Blakey
I love Melissa McCarthy in just about everything she has done, but glad to see here branch out in some more serious roles lately. Her latest film Superintelligence takes her back into her comedy genre and features a great cast including Bobby Cannavale, Brian Tyree Henry, and James Corden. Could this film bring the laughs or will it fail to live up to its title?
Superintelligence follows Carol Peters who starts getting snarky backtalk from her TV, phone and microwave, making her think she's being punk'd or losing her mind. In fact, the world's first super-intelligence has selected her for observation, taking over her life with a bigger, more ominous plan to take over everything. Now Carol is humanity's last chance before this artificial intelligence-with-an-attitude decides to pull the plug.
Like a lot of films right now this is another one getting the streaming release this time on HBO MAX. Once again McCarthy’s real life husband Ben Falcone is in the director’s chair as well as acting in the film. The trailers seemed funny enough, but didn’t seem to offer her usual over the top comedy that we have come to expect and to my surprise it was in fact pretty toned down. Make no mistake she is still all in with numerous physical gags and self-aware laughs, but she is more of a straight forward character this time around.
This is an interesting concept for what is actually a romantic comedy bringing in the fears and possibilities of technology controlling our lives. This isn’t anything that hasn’t been done in other films or TV series, but puts its own spin on it to create something relevant to today’s world and some fun uses of it all. McCarthy brings her usual charm and fun, but I might have been thinking it was going to be another over the top comedy so felt a bit let down. This is my own doing thanks to expectations since the film still delivers plenty of laughs.
The cast are all good here and bounce off each other well. You do have to let some realism go in regards to the technologies self-aware antics, but that is a given in this kind of film. I do love the use of Corden for the voice that also opens the door for some other great moments using this same feature. This film isn’t one of my favorites from McCarthy, but it entertains and gave me that laugh I needed to entertain.
Decide for yourself and check out Superintelligence streaming now on HBO MAX.