The latest Netflix sci-fi film is so bizarre that you must see it

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Bigbug is a surreal trip into science fiction. sci-fi

(Image credit: Netflix)

From The Mitchells vs. the Machines to Bigbug, Netflix has made a new live-action film about a robot rebellion. In addition, this isn’t your usual sci-fi storey.

To begin with, it’s the brainchild of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a director more renowned for the weird Amelie than science fiction. First of all, the movie begins in a TV programme in which adults pretend to be robots’ trained housepets, which is a little bit of a spoiler.

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Deadpan delivery and physical humour abound in this opening sequence, which serves as a strong warning sign that this film is going to be unusual. Bigbug continues the craziness by transporting you to a bizarre year of 2045.

Bigbug on Netflix portrays Alexa as a foe.

Having an android housemaid that appears lifelike enough that you won’t suspect it’s an Android until its eyes light up blue is the height of absurdity in a home with ubiquitous AI. Humans will soon be eating bugs (and praising them as delectable), while robots in the home will be able to detect falsehoods with ease. That’s the future of communication. You may believe you’re caught in a fresh version of Idiocracy when you realise how rare old books are these days.

When you understand that this isn’t an English-language picture, but rather a dub of a French film, things start to go awry rapidly. However, it is so subtle that you may not notice that it has no positive or negative connotations. As a result, their ostensibly wooden and ludicrous line delivery becomes an asset rather than a liability. You see, when everything is out of place, satire is all the more on the nose.

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As long as there’s no sign of the aforementioned problem. Alice’s AI-powered robots, for reasons that will soon be revealed, essentially go on strike, rise up, and lock the humans within. When the traffic bottleneck goes awry, the AIs begin to malfunction, and before you know it, you’re in a coma.

As a sci-fi comedy, Netflix’s Bigbug has a straightforward premise: We already give too much power to technology, and this is what happens when it becomes much worse.

(Image credit: Netflix)

How much you care We can’t help but be enchanted by Bigbug’s vivid and over-saturated hues, no matter how many times we see it. Other than the frightening Yonyx robots’ blazing blue eyes, the colours of Alice’s abode are a pleasant departure from the house’s predominant green and yellow tones. As with gritty superhero flicks, sci-fi movies often opt for the gloomy and sinister designs.

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a review of Netflix’s Bigbug, as seen by the critics

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Bigbug has a Tomatometer rating of only 43%. One reviewer, Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com, gave Bedbug 3.5 stars out of 4, saying that it is “a rougher, more intelligent sci-fi picture than most American audiences are accustomed to watching. Its tone is ambiguous, and it’s easy to misinterpret it.”

That score, however, is overshadowed by those who, according to Seitz, “misinterpret” the picture. Bigbug is described as “overdressed, overlong, and diminishingly hilarious” by Jeanette Catsoulis of the New York Times, and as “more tiresome than imaginative” by Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter.

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