M3GAN movie review: The themes in this Allison Williams-starrer are dealt with pretty impressively

Cady (McGraw), 9, loses her parents in an accident while on way to a skiing trip, landing her in the custody of her aunt Gemma (Williams). Far from the maternal kind, Gemma brings Cady home to a house with no toys except the “collectible” ones that are kept high up on shelves and are not to be trifled with, no story books, and no hugs. Gemma can barely even make time for Cady, caught up as she is in her high-stress job of programming toys in the highly competitive industry, to meet a coming Christmas deadline.

Lately, she has been working on M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android), or Megan, a life-size artificially intelligent doll designed to pair with a child and “self-evolve” to protect him or her from “all harm, physical or emotional”.

The cost is high, $10,000, but as Gemma figures: once you have this doll, you will never need another.

With Cady home and needing care, Gemma pairs her with the Megan prototype she has developed and sold her bosses on.

The sad, lonely Cady finds in Megan (acted by Donald, voiced by Davis) instant gratification for all her needs. A therapist assigned to her is the only one worried that this level of attachment to a toy, in place of a human, may not be healthy.

Of course, we know the answer to that, but M3GAN the film frames it in questions we can all relate to – choosing a career over a child, allowing screen time to make up for personal time, having someone else do the kind of rote work that parents often find themselves doing (as the film points out, they spend 78% of their time repeating instructions to their children such as “wash your hands), someone who does that without losing patience and always being there, just so that “we can focus on things that really matter”.

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Have we not all wished, at times, for a person we could guiltlessly hand over our children to?

Luckily for us, an “apex 21st century tech wrapped up in 4 ft of silicone” — who is programmed by the unthinking Gemma to learn everything from Jane Austen to Janis Joplin – is far into at least our future.

In the present, we tumble along.

M3GAN movie director: Gerald Johnstone
M3GAN movie cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis (voice)
M3GAN movie rating: 3 stars