Jack Simon is a mogul coach and writer/director who enjoys eating food he can’t afford, traveling to places out of his budget, and creating art about skiing, eating, and traveling while broke. Check out his website jacksimonmakes.com to see his Jack’s Jitney travelogue series. You can email him at jackdocsimon@gmail.com for inquiries of any type.Jack Simon/Courtesy photo
I’ve been excited about “Companion” since I first saw the preview popping up in theaters a few months ago. The trailer made an interesting trade, where it revealed the first-act twist that the protagonist, Iris (Sophie Thatcher), is a girlfriend robot whose design oscillates between being your best buddy and a bang buddy, depending on the owner’s mood and whims. The return on this deal was that it hid most of the plot inside this concept, so that when I sat down in my theater seat, I had only a vague semblance of what was in store. And I was not disappointed.
Firstly, the world-building done to enable this concept is impeccable. I find it only comparable to a lore-based video game that sets you up from the title screen onward for maximum immersion. Within the first 5 minutes, we get a scene that is shot inside an electric car, which has its automatic driving enabled. Iris’s partner, Josh (Jack Quaid), speaks the destination into the car’s dashboard, and then away they go. Soon afterwards, he unfolds his touchscreen phone horizontally, so it resembles more a tablet than a phone before folding it back up and shoving it neatly back into his pocket. This is technology that does not exist right now but is certainly conceivable in the very near future. Without words, without confusion, and without any of those godforsaken title cards with bad font that clogs up our silver screens too often these days, the audience is dropped into 2030 or 2035 or whatever year “Companion” takes place in. The specific time does not matter; what that period entails is what is paramount.
“Companion” does not waste this setting either. The first act is a revelation, as there, the script’s patient allusions to Iris’ reality enabled writer/director Drew Hancock to not rush his thesis. Before we get the robotic reveal, the writing plays with the duality of her objectification: Is this all by design, or is Sam a toxic dude who treats his girlfriend terribly? That it can go either way is pretty obtuse in its explicitness but suffices as layered storytelling. Interesting questions abound when the murderous call to action closes the chapter on the film’s opening third: Is this world aware of these robots? How prevalent are they? How many of these has Josh had? Is it an accepted endeavor to own one? It opens a wide range of themes to be addressed across the spectrum, from dehumanizing misogyny to AI advancement and their subsequent rights as autonomous, sentient beings. One by one comes the answers, dribbling and dripping out like a leaky faucet.
These ideas are not abandoned either; they are continuously expanded upon. Just one example of this would be when one of the principal characters is revealed to be an earlier manufacture version of Iris. However, their perspective is entirely alternative from Iris’s. They know they’re a robot; they’ve known for a long time, and they have embraced their reality. They want to honor their original coding to adore their partner with their whole heart as a way to provide meaning to their contrived existence. Because of this, I walked away from this horror-comedy with a much firmer understanding on artificial intelligence than I have ever picked up trying to comprehend tech bros’ explanations. Maybe I’m dumb, or maybe it’s arts’ job to distill what cannot be understood through lecture.
“Companion” is an almost flawless film that does not quite leap into elite territory. It is best described as a more exciting, more shallow version of 2013’s “Her.” As mentioned earlier, the script is exceptionally well-written, but it is embarrassingly obvious in whom it is lampooning. Taking center aim on the incel community and the “men’s rights” plague that has perverted culture, at times, I find myself rolling my eyes at the lines Quaid is stuck reading aloud. It is there the creativity lacks, as it seems that Hancock raided a 4chan thread and simply copied and pasted. Quaid doesn’t do himself any favors either, as he fails again and again to access a change in tone. He is either content, or he is angry, with no shades of grey emoting to be found. It is a shame, as every other character in the film is incredibly well-performed. Ultimately, though, films are judged by what the protagonist and antagonist actors can deliver.
Throw in some choppy editing that gets too cute with non-linear storytelling, and you end up with an exceptional film hamstrung by self-inflicted wounds.
Critic Score: 7.7 out of 10
Jack Simon is a mogul coach and writer/director who enjoys eating food he can’t afford, traveling to places out of his budget, and creating art about skiing, eating, and traveling while broke. Check out his website jacksimonmakes.com to see his Jack’s Jitney travelogue series. You can email him at jackdocsimon@gmail.com for inquiries of any type.