Wifelike

Wifelike is a company which creates robots sold to men to be obedient sexy wives. William Bradwell (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is purchasing Meredith (Elena Kampouris) to replace his late wife. He works for the company. Ironically, she was an advocate against the company. This has the potential of an interesting sci-fi movie, but it struggles to get away from the 90's late night cable softcore * feel. Kampouris plays an awkwardly submissive robot. There are some issues with the premise construction. It seems crazy to have a dream mode for robots. It makes no sense. I don't mind the twist in the movie, but it could be done better. I have a better twist. Meredith could be the real person under some sort of mind control. Maybe implant a chip in her brain and come at the premise from that direction. The movie is trying to deal with sentience of robots and it's a mixed bag. I want the idea to be done well. This is a second-rate attempt.

This movie is like a recipe gone wrong. All the ingredients are there in the proper amounts, it was mixed and cooked according to instructions, but the thing that came out of the oven was only fit for the garbage. The story is a mixture of several already existing movies that you will recognize. It seems to have all of the recurring metaphors associated with this genre but without the subtleties necessary. The acting is poor especially from Rhys-Meyers and Kampouris, who are both much better in other roles I've seen them in. My conclusion is that this movie was conceived entirely to show off Elena Kampouris naked or in some kind of contrived sex scene. There are at least 10 movies I can think of that deal with AI, exploitation and unintended consequences much better than this, I'd suggest you watch one of those instead!

I confess, I downloaded this film because I figured there had to be a "wifelike typing detected" joke in there somewhere. (Spoiler alert: not there. Nor were any other jokes. This film takes itself terribly seriously.) I almost bailed on it halfway through. The disconcerting sex doll stance of Meredith, the gratuitous "self-exploration mode on" scene, the gross lizard kissing with the balding guy 20 years older who "teaches" her, Agent Jack's wife doing a sexy-wexy dance in lingerie for him-it's like the people who make Skinamax movies saw Ex Machina and Humans and had an idea. It's the sort of film where you suspect the target audience are basement dwellers jerking it to every frame with a woman in it, even the one in teal randomly dancing by herself in the background of the dream party. (Not here to moralize, but if you want to watch *, just admit it to yourself and watch *.) However, the end the film uses its essential creepiness and makes it pay off, handsomely. Jonathan Rhys Meyers not only looks like a balding and confused Ben Stiller from Zoolander, but he's even grosser than we thought! A surprisingly decent justification for a whole lot of creepiness. Special callout to the extras playing sex dolls, I mean wives, on the stairs at the company run by the cut-rate Bill Maher! What thankless roles. Elena Kampouris does a fine homage to Gemma Chan from Humans.