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In 1979 the American board game company Milton Bradley launched Big Trak, a kind of futuristic foot long car that you could program to follow a set route by loading into it simple directions around turning left and right and travelling certain multiples of its own length. Then in 85 we got Teddy Ruxpin, a cuddly bear whose eyes and ears moved as it told stories from audio tapes loaded into a cassette deck in its back. These were the beginnings of a market in animatronic toys that hasn’t actually progressed too much further. We’ve had Furbys since 1998, which can react in limited ways to various voice commands and ‘learn’ to speak from hearing people talk but really technology hasn’t moved on in this field as much as you might have thought it would.

M3gan is a film that shows you why. It might be silly entertainment but those in the know, know that this is the way we could be heading if we push it. Seriously, the movies are probably right – machines will take over if we let them. Think I’m being glib? My phone already makes calls from my pocket even when the lock is on, regularly plays the music it chooses rather than what I want and, if it really wants to wind me up, it will frustratingly delete files and apps entirely at its own will. Pay attention to this movie, it is a cautionary tale.

It is also a bit dumb. As much is the computerised doll of the title becomes more sophisticated so the humans in the story seem less developed. That’s okay though because you have to view this film as a broad comedy. It is played quite straight but it is actually a satire, it has to be because if you look at it in any other way it comes across as a cheesy, cliched, predictable and schlocky thriller but there are flashes of irony, social comment and genre pastiche to support an argument to the contrary.

So yes it is another killer doll film and yes it is another psycho robot movie. (I’m pretty sure we’ve even had the combination before; there was a 2019 remake of Child’s Play that I recall had Chucky as A.I not possessed.) On the surface while it may not do much that is new it does have fun. Don’t take it seriously and you’ll enjoy it, but at the same time take it seriously because there might be a warning here.

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The Ripley Factor:

Allison Williams plays a successful career obsessed single woman who learns what is important when she becomes a surrogate parent for her niece. She also appears to be the greatest robotics genius the world has ever known.

There is also a grumpy woman next door who so loves her ill trained dog, a boastful mum with a miscreant child, a passive aggressive social worker and a bespectacled, power suited female marketing executive. Then there is M3gan herself of course who as well as downloading the entire contents of the internet into her brain so as to gain the upper hand over her complacent human creators, also seems to have watched and taken on board every female killer movie from Carrie to Basic Instinct.

No tropes here then. Let’s assume again that it’s all deliberate