Movie Review: Surrogates

Denisa and I took a break from Buffy to watch a movie the other evening. Surrogates had been in my Netflix queue for quite some time, so I figured we’d give it a shot. I honestly didn’t have too high of expectations for the film, mainly based on Bruce Willis’s hairstyle from the trailers. It’s not the bald Willis you see on the cover. No. It’s bad comb-over Willis, and nobody wants to watch a comb-over for two hours. Okay, that’s not the only reason I had low expectations. The movie had just never had any good buzz in the sci-fi circles I frequent, so I thought it would be a waste of time. (Why I watched it anyway . . . I have no answer for).

I’m happy to report that the movie was very enjoyable, despite the comb-over’s best efforts. It’s set in the not too distant future, in a world where people have started living their lives through surrogates. Imagine what you do when you play a video game, except somebody’s made a robot that lets you play that video game in real life. You control the robot, see what it sees, hear what it hears, tell it what to do–all from the comfort of your bathrobe. (Judging by this film, pretty much everyone in America likes to wear bathrobes. Is this true? I hate them, personally.)

Anyway, there are a few people who don’t like this lifestyle–who prefer to interact with breathing germ transmitters. They live in separate communities, but everyone else ignores them, until someone comes up with a device that can kill the people controlling the robots, through their robots. Kill the robot, kill the user. Get it? Tension ensues.

The movie isn’t without its holes, and it’s by no means a classic, but it successfully presented an interesting “what if” scenario, and it had me thinking about it for the next while. Denisa also enjoyed it. I’d give it three stars, but that comb-over . . .

Ah, heck. Three stars anyway. Just nobody let Bruce Willis’s hair start a fashion trend.