Finch (2021)

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Starring Tom Hanks, Caleb Landry Jones. [PG-13]

In Cast Away, it was just Tom and a beach ball. Now, he gets to share the screen for a couple of hours with a CGI robot named Jeff (voiced and mo-capped by Jones), just him and the machine and a little doggy. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, robotics engineer Hanks, sick with radiation poisoning and on the run from deadly superstorms and UV rays, builds the bot to take care of his dog when he’s gone, but has to teach the humanoid companion a thing or two before it’s ready. A technically well-crafted yarn with a reliable turn from Hanks as the grouchy and enervated “last man on Earth, but not really” cliché, but there are no surprises here, and the sentimentality that comes on strong toward the end is awkward and unearned. Also suffers from a muddled mixed bag of a “co-star”; the robot’s voice is initially awkwardly charming, switches to somewhat off-putting at lengthy repetition, and then it simply becomes banal as it adapts more human inflections (soulful, empathetic, etc.)—this is one robot that becomes less compelling the more it learns and sounds like a person. Does almost nothing to advance the form or stand apart from it, which ultimately just makes it a sub-standard way to kill a couple of hours. Co-produced by Robert Zemeckis.

49/100