Film critic
ATLAS
Duration: 118 minutes. Rated PG-13 (strong sci-fi violence, action, bloody images and strong language). On Netflix.
It’s hard to tell if Jennifer Lopez has a talent agent — or a blindfold and a dartboard.
Her projects over the past year have been equally hit and miss – from her Dunkin’ Donuts commercial in which her rumored husband Ben Affleck became a rapper to her campy musical film “This Is Me…Now: A Love Story” with Jane Fonda and Post. Malone as zodiac signs.
None of this makes any sense.
In a modern world obsessed with staying on brand, J.Lo’s brand is more like Newman’s Own: It’s got salad dressing And animal food.
Which brings me to “Atlas,” his Netflix sci-fi pic that is a completely uninspired ripoff of “The Terminator” and “Battlestar Galactica.”
What is she doing in there?
Lopez plays a socially awkward scientist and chess master named Dr. Atlas Shepherd, who must track down a terrorist robot hiding on a distant planet where trees resemble traffic cones.
I know. It wasn’t on my bingo card either.
Instead of Skynet and the Cylons, Lopez’s character says “AI” over and over in a doomed quest for relevance.
Artificial intelligence – which here basically means androids – has grown and killed 3 million people. Twenty-eight years later, humanity is still searching for Harlan (Simu Liu), the machine leader who led the devastating revolt.
Atlas (another stressed and irritated Lopez role) reunites with Harlan, whom she knew as a child and whose mother helped develop this technology, on a distant planet. She then accompanies the military on a journey through space to capture him.
Where she and director Brad Peyton fail is in capturing the viewer’s attention.
Like most Netflix films outside of awards season, “Atlas” is a slow-moving afterthought that’s content to be just short of OK.
The film discovers nothing new in what is a very old story of the one-off relationship between man and technology. It doesn’t go so boldly where “Star Trek” has gone many times before.
The filmmakers are trying to bring some novelty with a controversial neural linking device that connects people to AI to improve efficiency. This idea, while intriguing, is confusing and poorly explained. A program that adapts to say “st!” ” isn’t exactly Isaac Asimov-level insight.
Even seen through the prism of explosive action, the film is a fizz. Once she lands on the planet, Atlas straps himself onto a giant walking robot — think the one Ripley uses at the end of “Aliens” — and lumbers toward a rescue ship.
So a lot of the movie is just Lopez sitting around and wrapped in metal as she yells at a Siri-like computer named Smith. The old idea here is that this embittered and distrustful woman is beginning to understand that not all artificial intelligence is inherently evil.
This reminds me of Sarah Connor.
Even though Lopez’s star power and raw appeal are more palpable than ever, it’s not enough to flesh out a genius consumed by guilt and self-loathing, whose intellect is the key to survival of humanity.
The lousy writing doesn’t do her any favors, it’s true, but she’s the kind of actress who can save “The Wedding Planner” — not the Earth.
New York Post
