James Corden’s voice was also a good choice.
SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)
Carol Peters (Melissa McCarthy) is a woman who quit a decent career in Silicon Valley and is trying to work on something more philanthropic. After a terrible job interview causes a potential employer (Karan Soni) to call her the “most average person on Earth,” she is selected as the test subject by the recently sentient computer program called SuperIntelligence (or Si)(James Corden/Octavia Spencer). Si has studied humanity and decided that it could either destroy humanity or save it and it is asking Carol to help it decide. Si encourages Carol to try and reconnect with her ex-boyfriend George (Bobby Cannavale). Meanwhile, Carol’s best friend Dennis (Brian Tyree Henry) works with the US Government to try and shut Si down, but it looks like the world’s fate rests on Carol.
END SUMMARY
It’s so sad that Melissa McCarthy keeps getting movies that are not up to her level, because she is really an incredibly talented person. She’s so talented, in fact, that she almost makes this movie work, but it’s just a bit too scattered and too bland to properly take advantage of her abilities. A lot of it is that this movie is unbelievably arbitrary.
First off, it’s ridiculous that Si, a supercomputer, decides that Carol is the most average person on Earth just because some douche calls her that. She’s a former strategist for Yahoo! who now wants to run charities to help make the world a better place. She clearly is above average in intelligence, education, and resources and is clearly more ethically-focused than most people. Then, Si gives Carol three days to prove to it that humanity merits saving, but decides the best way to do that is to watch her try to get back together with her ex-boyfriend. Even weirder, we don’t get a clear picture of why Carol and George split up and why they never got back together before now, so it’s not really surprising when they quickly reconnect. We just don’t get a lot of emotional weight out of their interactions, despite the fact that they’re basically preventing omnicide. This movie never feels like there are any stakes, even with the premise having massive ones.
Then there’s the subplot of Dennis working with the government and the agents trying to interfere with Si’s test of Carol. While they are comically inept, it further confounds the tone of the film. Later, the film *Spoilers* tries to reveal that all of Si’s actions have been done because the real test was whether humanity would just get out of the way and let Si operate independently or if they would immediately try to kill Si. By trying to destroy the internet and remove Si, humanity almost dooms itself. This twist is contrary to everything else Si has done and ends up being averted almost immediately.
Overall, I just didn’t get much out of this movie. It’s got some funny parts, but it’s mostly just boring.
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