Genre: Comedy?
Premise: (from IMDB) When an all-powerful Superintelligence chooses to study average Carol Peters, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. As the A.I. decides to enslave, save or destroy humanity, it’s up to Carol to prove that people are worth saving.
About: A lot of people will focus on the terrible Rotten Tomatoes score of Superintelligence (26%). But Superintelligence actually achieves a rarity for any comedy, which is to get a worse audience score (23%) than critic score. Audiences are always more forgiving with comedy than critics. Which means this must be a really really really really really bad movie. Melissa McCarthy teams up, once again, with her husband, Ben Falcone, who directed the film and basically wrote it as well. This winning combo has created Tammy, Life of the Party, and The Boss.
Writer: Steve Mallory (but from what I understand, Falcone and McCarthy basically told the writer what to write)
Details: 2 hours of hell
First of all, you’re probably wondering why I’m reviewing this. I’ll tell you. This is one of the worst pieces of professional entertainment I’ve ever seen. Normally, I’d take that in and move on with my life. But I can’t. I can’t because if there’s one thing that bothers me about this business, it’s when someone with less-than-zero talent gets millions of dollars to make movies.
I’m not dumb. I understand that untalented people weasel their way into every industry. And, truth be told, they only make up about 10-15% of those industries. But their level of ineptitude is so extreme, that it always feels like a lot more than that. And Ben Falcone has to be the single most untalented writer and director I’ve ever seen get this many opportunities in Hollywood.
Of course, he has an ace up his sleeve. He’s married to Melissa McCarthy, who, ironically, is one of the most talented people in the business. I’m a huge Melissa McCarthy fan. Go to Youtube right now and search “SNL Melissa McCarthy.” There’s a reason no SNL host has more video views than her. She’s hilarious. And that’s what makes this all the more frustrating. Falcone’s lack of talent isn’t just dooming him. It’s taking down someone who actually has talent. Someone who should be making much better movies.
I’m going to try to summarize the plot of Superintelligence for you. But I’m giving you advance warning that the nonsensical nature of everything you’re about to read is going to make it sound like I didn’t understand it. No, this was the actual plot.
Carol Peters – the nicest person in the world – lives in Seattle and is trying to find a non-profit job. She’s having some trouble and, yet, that doesn’t seem to play into the plot at all. In other words, if she fails to get a job, it doesn’t sound like it will affect her life in any way.
Why does this matter? Because, later, the Superintelligence will buy Carol a 5 million dollar apartment, a 100,000 dollar car, and put 10 million in her bank account. But since Carol has never needed or wanted money, these developments feel random and unimportant. I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Out of nowhere, the first ever self-thinking AI contacts Carol, presenting itself as James Corden, since Corden is Carol’s favorite TV personality. The AI says it’s going to destroy humanity in 72 hours. Why? No idea. Never says. Probably best we not get into the specifics as we will then find out that if he destroys humanity, he also destroys himself, which would make absolutely no sense. But what in this movie does make sense?
First, AI James Corden says, he wants to learn about humanity. And he’s ID’d Carol as the perfect guinea pig. Why did he pick Carol specifically, though? No idea. To Falcone’s credit, this question is asked like 50 times in the movie. And yet, nobody answers it. Even AI James Corden answers it once and we don’t understand his explanation. ANYWAY!
To learn about humanity, AI James Corden asks Carol what she would do if she only had three days to live, since she does. She says make things right with her ex-boyfriend, George. Coincidentally, in the only attempt at writing an actual screenplay, George is moving to a new city in three days. So Carol better hurry up! Wait a minute. Do we even need a ticking time bomb with the George relationship if the earth is going to blow up in 3 days? Oh, who needs logic in screenwriting? MOVING ON!
As if understanding just how bad this script is, AI James Corden attempts to help out, giving himself a motivation for why he wants these two to be together. He wants to “better understand humanity” you see. And seeing if Carol can rekindle her relationship with George will somehow… achieve this? Maybe?
Quick plot summary break here cause I’m about to explode with anger. This script is so bad that I am positive it would finish fifth in voting an any Scriptshadow Amateur Showdown. That’s how bad this. It can’t even beat an average amateur screenplay. One of the primary issues with a bad script is that every screw is loose. It’s not clear why James Corden is going to blow up the world. It’s not clear why he wants Carol and George to rekindle their relationship. It’s not clear what Carol’s financial situation is or why she can be eternally jobless and not have to worry about money. Every single aspect of the script is vague. That’s bad writing. And for screenwriting this bad to be produced? Shame on these people. Seriously. Shame on them.
Sorry, I got distracted again. Where were we with the plot? Oh yeah, so the US Defense Department gets wind of the AI and is going to turn off the entire internet except for one small computer, trapping the AI there and then killing it, which is the only well thought out plot point in the entire movie. But AI James Corden gets wind of this and makes it impossible to turn him off.
However, at the last second, he has a change of heart when Carol does something unexpected (she doesn’t tell George about the impending doom). This makes AI James Corden realize that he has a lot to learn about humanity, so, okay fine, he’ll keep them around for a while. The End.
First of all, James Corden. You need to do better. You’re very talented but you’re George Clooney level at picking your projects. Have your agent start picking them for you.
Okay, maybe I can take a break from being so angry and use this opportunity to teach some lessons here. Unlikely but I’ll try.
Concept. When a concept is weak, nothing you write will matter. A concept is what forms your movie. It is the initial structural beam. Without a strong one, you’ll spend your entire script in “search mode,” where you’re searching for the story. Guess what, you won’t find it. You need to have done the work in the concept stage.
Superintelligence is not a concept. It’s a concept fragment. The only part that has concept potential is the superintelligence part. But then you need something that the superintelligence interrupts that is clever or ironic or has some form to it. A superintelligence studying an average person is not a concept. A superintelligence studying the dumbest person in the world still isn’t a movie-level concept, in my opinion, but it’s better. The irony of the highest intelligence trying to learn from the dumbest intelligence has some irony baked into it.
The biggest clue that this isn’t a concept is that you would have the exact same movie without the superintelligence part! This movie is about a woman who reconnects with an ex-boyfriend. You didn’t need the superintelligence for that. Like we already established, you didn’t even need the 72 hours before planetary destruction since George was moving out of town in 72 hours himself. EXACT. SAME. MOVIE.
Sure, you wouldn’t have had the AI buying Carol a car or a nice apartment. But like we established, those things had zero impact on our heroine. If our protagonist had been dirt poor and always wanted money, those purchases would’ve mattered. It could’ve been a Cinderella type situation or a “be careful what you wish for” film. But that’s how bad the screenwriting was here. They didn’t even know to marry the character situation to the concept. They were two completely different things that they attempted to mash up against each other the whole movie in some desperate attempt at comedy.
This shows what happens when there is no oversight, no pushback, no conflict, in development. That’s the thing I don’t understand with writers. They’re afraid of feedback. Afraid someone is going to tell them their idea sucks or their character sucks. BUT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT!!! You want pushback. You want people to say, “No, that doesn’t work.” “No, that’s boring.’ Because then it forces you to go back in there and come up with something better. That’s how good movies are made.
The reason you can tell that nobody pushed back here is because everything that occurs in this movie occurs easily. Carol lives an easy life. We know the AI is never going to hurt Carol. We know Carol isn’t going to encounter much resistance getting back with George. There isn’t a lick of genuine conflict at any stage at any point in this movie.
It’s so badly written that I believe this script should be commemorated by all major film schools as the defining example of how not to write a screenplay. Every single choice in this script is wrong. I’m serious. Every one. If you made the exact opposite decision on every one of these story choices, you would likely come up with something great. That’s how misguided this was.
I don’t know how you can be this bad. You have to try to be this awful at something.
This goes down as one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life.
[xxx] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you want to pay something off, you actually have to set it up. I didn’t know that people were so dumb that they’d need to be told this. But apparently, it’s the case with Ben Falcone. So there’s a scene around the midpoint where Carol takes George to a Seattle Mariners game and former Mariner great Ken Griffey Jr. comes to say hi to them and George nearly has a seizure. Ken Griffey Jr. is saying hi to him! Oh my God! This is amazing! He takes like 50 selfies with him and can’t stop talking to him. There’s only one problem with this moment. It was never set up. We were never told, before this moment, that George was a Ken Griffey Jr. fan. We were never told he was a Mariners fan. Heck, we were never even told he liked baseball!!! Which made this freakout session bizarre. Had a, you know, real screenwriter been in charge of this, they would’ve mentioned several times early on how big of a Mariners and Griffey Jr baseball fan George was, which would’ve helped this scene play a lot better.
