Replicas (2018) Reviews

• Excellent premise, lousy execution

  jwwalrath-227-854872019-01-12

  In Replicas, Keanu Reeves is a scientist working for a company in a South American country focusing on cloning and trying to preserve the human mind on a computer. This turns out to be super convenient as the scientist loses his wife and kids in a car crash. Grief-stricken, he clones their bodies and transfers their consciousnesses (as one does). What results is a surprisingly amateurish effort considering the lead. The dialogue is pretty weak. People do things that don't feel natural. Weirdly enough, the movie explains certain things pretty thoroughly and interestingly, such as the whole lazarus/rebirth process, while other plot points are just revealed abruptly and sloppily. The acting doesn't help things either. Keanu is on autopilot here. The guy who plays his boss is hit-and-miss. But it's Alice Eve (She's Out of my League; Star Trek into Darkness) who has the worst performance. She acts like an animatronic. (And yes this is even before the cloning. It isn't a something-went-wrong-type situation.) She has two facial expressions: slightly happy and slightly worried. On the plus side, Silicon Valley's Ben Middleditch is the only one who manages to make all the dialogue work. My hat off to him. It's sad that this movie was botched so badly because the actual general story could have worked. The concepts they explore here are fun and fascinating. A lot of thought did go into how they brought the family back. To it's credit, the film does look really good. It has excellent color use and picturesque filming locations. Overall, this is a bad film, but I wouldn't say it was downright painful. I didn't leave regretting having watched it. If you like making fun of bad movies, then you might want to check this out. Otherwise, I can't recommend this.

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• Bad movie that I enjoyed watching

  jelliejune2018-12-05

  This must have been one of the strangest movies I've seen all year, and I both liked and disliked it. There's something almost comical about the way this movie progresses and I couldn't help but laugh out loud a few times during it. I saw it as a sneak preview in our local theatre since it won't be realeased until January here and was actually very excited they picked this movie. The trailers looked great and I thought it would be a different vibe because of those trailers. Ed had some great lines though. I love Ed.

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• Underrated movie

  mohammed-alzadjali2019-01-10

  I don't understand why most people are harsh on this movie. The idea of the movie is great and well done in my opinion. Yes, it's nothing against big budget movies but it was a good movie. I just wish if there was more action and story behind the movie. It felt like it was quick.

• Flawed in many ways, but I still enjoyed it.

  TheTopDawgCritic2018-12-24

  The major issue with the film was the writing - the screenplay written by novice Chad St. John (this being his 2nd only screenplay), and the story by a novice Stephen Hamel (this being only his 3rd full length film). The camera directing was fairly decent from Jeffrey Nachmanoff (this being only his 4th full length feature film, his experience mainly in TV series), but I feel he failed in directing his talent properly, especially Alice Eve, who was unconvincing and seemed like this was her first acting role. The S/VFX weren't the greatest, but for a B-grade film low budget film, they were quite adequate - not sure what some of the haters are whining about. It seems that the production itself was a little cheap (thus B-grade), perhaps meant to be a low budget (indie?) film. After all, it was purchased by Entertainment Studios for only 4m. As a huge fan of Keanu Reeves, I feel he should have just stayed on as 1 of the *gulp* 27 producers, and cast someone more fitting as a scientist. I think many decisions couldn't have been easily agreed upon with that many producers. The casting was terrible overall. Security guys with pony tails and sunglasses? The acting again wasn't as good as I expected, but I think that was the directors fault as I mentioned above. The only convincing lead was Thomas Middleditch. As a low budget B-grade film, and although there is a lot of haters out there, it was still decent enough and it kept me pinned to the screen. Had the writing been tighter, directing better, and cast a little differently, then this would have been a hit. Nevertheless, it was still entertaining and I enjoyed it. Not worth the hater's low scores, nor the fake 10's, but it's an honest 8/10 from me - taking into consideration it was a low budget B-grade film.

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• Judge for yourself!

  sbutler-478802018-12-24

  This movie is not the best but it's definitely not the worst. If you are a person who enjoys watching movies without criticizing every little detail I think you'll enjoy it. I did laugh at the CGI but the rest of the movie was good. Those that are rating is it low are being really harsh. The only way you will know if you like it is if you give it a try.

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