AI LOVE YOU (อไอหัวใจโอเวอร์โหลด) (NETFLIX) (2022)

SYNOPSIS: After a software glitch causes an advanced AI program to fall in love with a young woman, it escapes into the body of a man and tries to win her heart.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Mario Maurer (Pee Mak) and Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul (The Con-Heartist) pairs up once again after their successful Crazy Little Thing Called Love which was liked a decade ago. Maybe certain things in this world should be left as it is especially after watching their latest collaboration, AI Love You.

Thai-French actor and filmmaker David Asavanond and visual effect artist Stephan Zlotescu co-directs this sci-fi drama which tries hard to blend technology and romance to tell a modern love story set in a near futuristic Bangkok.

In a world where buildings and apartments are run by artificial intelligence robots, an AI dubbed Dob has fallen in love with a product designer Lana (Pimchanok). Lana who happens to be prone to bad dates is baffled by Dob who confessed “he” is in love with her. You know AI are not supposed to have feelings or a physical entity.

In comes Bob (Mario), one of Lana’s bad dates who also happened to be a software engineer from Dob’s AI company. When Bob threatens to delete all of Lana’s files from Dob, the AI downloads itself to Bob’s body essentially taking over his physicality and predictability proceeds to win Lana’s heart with the encouragement of his fellow AIs.

While Spike Jonze’s Her delivers a beautiful relationship between a human and a robot with more realistic human emotion, AI Love You is somewhat sluggish when it comes to making an impact about the connection and mind-bending romance between the impossible.

There’s also a weak attempt in conjuring some cute humour when Dob first realised it’s trapped in Bob’s body. Like a fish out of water, Dob attempts to live life as a normal human being and learning how to go after Lana’s heart liked pretending to be an art lover and a caring figure. The entire second act is all about Dob and Lana getting lovey-dovey until the jarring finale in which the director himself, David Asavanond appears as a hunter of rogue AIs to generate some need be animosity.

The whole technology part doesn’t make much of a sense considering that AI’s are a much more superb form of computer programming but most of the communication here are entirely nonsensical. The main theme of the movie is frankly rather interesting and thought-provoking however, the story pretty much decamp to romance territory given the presence of one of Thai’s best onscreen couple, Mario Maurer and Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul.

Even for a rom-com, this is a boring disaster that fails in both comedy and drama. Mario Maurer and Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul certainly has been in much better works than AI Love You. This is unfortunately a major mishap for both of them.

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee