ATLAS (2024)
a review by Evan Landon
If Ayn Rand were still alive, she would have shrugged with Atlas too.
Let's just get this out of the way: I don't care how others rate movies because usually they have some sort of agenda behind it; be it movie ticks, commissions, clout with publications, or $20 for a 5 star review on certain aggregate websites. I don't get any of that shit, so my opinions are purely unbiased. I stopped listening to what everyone else thinks a long time ago, so I could not tell you who or why anyone liked this film. That being said, this movie sucks.
I went into it the same way I do most movies I know nothing about: I will try to find something I like, no matter what, and that was the special effects were pretty damn good. I think if the director had a better screenplay to work with, it would have been a much more interesting film because the first 5 minutes were pretty damn good! The Rock's favorite director, Brad Peyton, tries his hand here with a script written by a guy nobody has ever heard of, so I don't think this entirely his fault. Then J Lo sticks her head in and the rest of the 120 minute run time is you looking at her tired, resting bitch face with flashing lights of the console reflecting off her frizzled, nappy ass hair and cracked foundation make-up enough to give a blind man epilepsy.
This movie was a chore to get through, needless to say.
The story is basically the same as any “Jenny From Da Block” movie you've ever seen: she is a scorned woman (this time by Artificial Intelligence) who has to overcome her differences to find love (this time with Artificial Intelligence) after fighting an uphill battle and discover more about herself than she thought was possible. This time, it's set in space! This also might be the third or fourth time a movie has straight up ripped off Exo Squad, that I continue to howl at the moon for since my childhood.
In all seriousness, I don't think Artificial Intelligence works that way, nor in the way they try to make it work in this movie. Of course, one could say that it “evolved o'er time” or whatever. Whenever I hear that, it reeks of lazy storytelling.
With all the bullshit hitting the fan with J Lo as of recent, I don't think anyone is asking for her to star in anything, but I'm sure she has mansions to pay for and publicists to ignore, so this must be par for the course with her career on stilts. She has to give away tickets to her own shows, so she definitely should not be resting her laurels on her acting career instead because those have never been all that great.
This $100 million shart went straight to Netflix, so as always, you will never get full disclosure on how much it made. It's easy to assume that it would have bombed if they released it in theaters, but let's steer away from hypotheticals and just call it a shitshow of a washed-up narcissist who liked being in that robot cockpit so she could smell her own farts. There are much better things to watch on Netflix, especially if you have 2 hours to kill.
1.5 out of 5