There’s one thing you gotta understand about me: I’m willing to overlook a lot of plot holes and weak execution in a film if I like its overall premise. Or its use of snark. Or just the plain cut of its jib.

As such, I disagree with the critics who panned the recently released to Netflix AI movie “AfrAId” (currently 22% on Rotten Tomatoes.) I thought it was a lot of fun. 

(Side note: whoever realized the letter-pair AI is in the word Afraid must’ve gotten a major bonus.”)

The film is clearly drawn from the same fears of technology that spawned 2022’s killer robot movie: “M3gan”. In “AfrAId”, the home of Curtis (John Cho) welcomes AIA, a kind of augmented version of Amazon’s Alexa device that can prod the kids to do their chores, take over the drudgery of Mom’s life and much more. Sounds too good to be true, no? And of course it is.

Now, there’s plenty that doesn’t work in the movie. The final act kind of falls to pieces and I was never really clear what was motivating the AIA to do what it did. (It’s hinted at but not really clarified enough to suit me.) And many of the scenarios presented just don’t quite add up. (Several controversies du jour—swatting, Q-Anon conspiracies and deepfake porn—seemed forced into the plot.) 

But enough does work and it’s all wrapped in a philosophical bent that really tickled my brain. At one point, the AI assembles a realistic video representation of one character’s father from old videos and information on the web and brings him to life. We (that is, those of us in the real world) are just about on the cusp of that possibility. How will we handle that? Are we going to feel that, in some way, those avatars are our dead relatives? (Recall the Google employee a few years ago who was convinced his AI chatbot was alive and conscious.) 

Here’s an extension of these questions: are the brains of flesh and blood people no more that a series of complex connections that can be duplicated in the digital realm? “AfrAId” doesn’t dig too deep into these questions, but it goes far enough to be very intriguing.

And, of course, it touches on “Matrix-style” fears of AI being a  superintelligence that will destroy us.

The pacing of the film was a little weird, a little clunky. I couldn’t tell if this was done on purpose or just bad editing. The acting was hit or miss, with the youngest kid being a stand out. John Cho was good.

Despite all that, “AfrAId” is a movie that will stick with me until long after computers have taken over society and converted us to fuel sources.