It’s bad enough any time Jennifer Lopez gets to star in a movie, but Jenny from the Block as an AI-hating computer expert? Come on, Netflix. 2024 was already one of the worst years for Netflix movies, thanks to forgettable releases like Damsel and Rebel Moonand JLo’s recently released Atlas it might actually end up being the worst of the entire year.
Starring a horribly misplaced Lopez, Atlas is about a government analyst who travels to a distant world to defeat a robot. Netflix describes Lopez’s character as a “brilliant but misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence,” which, apparently, sounds like the role she was born to play.
From the new film’s official logline: “Atlas Shepherd, a brilliant but misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence, joins a mission to capture a renegade robot with whom she shares a mysterious past. But when plans go awry, her only hope to save humanity’s future from artificial intelligence is to trust it.”
Let me save you the trouble of watching this: The movie looks cheap. The story is shallow. I found the script to be pretty creepy and the only reason it makes sense that Lopez is in this movie at all is that she just wanted to get paid. Whatever its reason for being, the result is a film with an abysmal 17% critic rating and a very mediocre 54% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, plus a 5.7/10 on IMDb. Make of it what you will.
If you want a great AI movie, I recommend avoiding this one Atlas like the plague and trying out a Netflix movie like I am the mother Instead. In it, a robot known as “Mother” (voiced by Rose Byrne) raises a human teenager after an extinction-level event that supposedly wiped out human life outside of the “mother” and daughter’s closed underground compound. Hilary Swank plays a man who eventually joins the band, challenging the teenager’s full understanding of the world.
You could also do a lot worse than Her, director Spike Jonze’s 2013 drama starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man who falls in love with an artificial intelligence voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Available to stream on Max, it’s back in the news thanks to OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT using a voice that sounds suspiciously like Johansson’s — and drawing the actress’ ire for it.
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