Android Insurrection

My initial reaction was that it sucks. In fact, I stopped it after the first 10 minutes of the movie and called my cable provider to demand a refund. They had the audacity to charge $4.99 for this 24 hour rental. The rep I spoke with refused to refund me. I went to bed, got up the next day, and gave it another try. I figured I paid for it, I may as well watch it. I'm a big sci-fi fan and I can tolerate a lot of absurdity with bad acting and poor special effects so long as the story line is engaging. After my initial shock, I'd have to say that I was entertained. I'll give this one 5 out of 10. It's definitely not in the same class as Terminator, Matrix, I-Robot, or even Lost In Space ("Danger, Will Robinson!"). But if you like sci-fi more for engaging your imagination than wowing your eyeballs, then this may be entertaining for you. It was for me.

A truly magnificent work of unintentional comedy, Android Insurrection is an astonishingly incompetent piece of film making. Sandwiched between opening and closing jumbo-sized slabs of expository monologue, the story is a fairly straight-forward military fantasy. Per contemporary convention, there's an elite team of arrogant meat-heads and hot babes who are the last line of defense against The Threat - in this case, robots. Of course, there are complications, and at least one major character discovery that anyone can see from the beginning of the movie.

Through the course of this tediously familiar journey, the actors stumble over dialog that doesn't serve to advance any story, but really just create argumentative conflict (often, lifting classic lines such as "skin job," and "nuke it from space"). And since we never really learn anything about most of the cannon fodder here, we don't really care when meat hits the fan. Which is frequently.

I'm no military expert, but if I were in a fire fight, I'd probably duck when the shooting starts. But not this "elite team." Sluggishly reacting against computer generated targets that were added later, the cast look as energized as my grandfather putting on the 4th hole at Leisure World. I'd like to blame that all on director Bellware giving his actors nothing but a green screen to act against. But these people can't even carry convincing conversation with one another. It doesn't help that the commanding colonel barks orders with a hilariously awful, stage-comic German accent (and why German, anyway?). But then, there's the red- haired android - a sort of eye-candy slurry of Cherry 2000's Melanie Griffith and the Fifth Element's Leeloo - who combines a clumsy interpretation of robot mannerisms with Valley Girl up-talking. Then again, maybe that really is "artificial intelligence."

In the end, though, there is one nutritious lump in this otherwise thin gruel: the technology design. The non-humanoid robots are really imaginative, and interesting to look at. But they don't carry a movie. Google some still shots, instead.

The plot: A team of elite commandos infiltrate an enemy base to extract a group of friendly androids.

I'm really not sure where to even start. Given the apparent budgetary restrictions, any criticism of this film seems almost mean-spirited, but there are so many problems that you'd have to be a member of the cast or crew to like it. Even their relatives probably wouldn't rate it well. I have a high tolerance for low budgets, bad acting, and crappy special effects. I can even enjoy the occasional Z-grade movie. I'm sure that everyone involved in this project is a nice person, and it looks like they probably had some fun making it... but it's just not a very good film.

The skeletal story involves a team of elite commandos who fight against killer AIs and try to extract friendlies from an enemy base. The commandos are your basic B-movie archetypes who speak in clichés and recycled lines from other science fiction films. The special effects are YouTube-level, though they do show a certain degree of imagination. The acting ranged from amateurish to astonishingly bad. Really, I could have handled the acting if only they had cut the scenes of the guy with the fake German accent. There was no real tension or atmosphere at all. I wouldn't be too surprised if this were actually an amateur film that somehow managed to get professionally distributed.

The only thing that would keep this off Syfy is the language, but it would be trivial to clean it up. My guess is that Syfy fans will probably be soon sharing in our collective pain. If you have a high tolerance for Z-grade science fiction (such as Star Trek fan films on YouTube), you'll might be able to sit through this. I did. The ending credits have a kind of cool song. That was probably the best part of this film. Also, some of the cast are attractive. I'm struggling to find anything else positive to add. If all you want is 90 minutes of mindless violence against robots, I guess you watch this, but there are much better choices.

I will never get my $1.20 back, or the 30 minutes I spent watching this POS. This was truly one of the most amazing piece of crap I've ever seen. The hilariously serious "german" colonel with the Hitler mustache, the horrible CGI graphics, the fake dialog, terrible storyline, endless (for 30 minutes at least) walking around in someone's garage that had been decorated into a warehouse scene all worked together to nauseate my brain. I did not know that 1990's pickup trucks and 80's forklifts were going to survive into the year 2500!!! Wow, must go buy one and then park it in the garage, wait, they already did that here! Dang! I also noticed the missed GCI weapons firing shot, thought it was me, but went back and there she was, shaking that gun but no shots being fired. Truly amazing... Hope they didn't spend any more than $100 on the whole set. Unfortunately they'll make a million $$ only because of a good distribution - Shame on you RedBox! Don't rent this movie! It will only p** you off - after the laughter stops.

As most reviews say, awful film. Took me 1/3 of the movie to figure out what the real story was about. Sure it's low budget, but that does not excuse a bad plot, bad script and a silly ending. It was filmed completely in some large industrial building, which in itself is not really bad, but it is supposed to be a mile underground, and there are current era vehicles (film set far in future) and windows in the machine shop, not to mention the 1990's stereo, photocopier, and much more. Guess they did their best to hide much and use the same set-dec for many scenes. I particularly liked the footsteps that do not change sound regardless of the floor covering, speed or force of step - and at times not synchronized with the actual motion. So much random shooting and uncoordinated flash-bangs in this film, and many of the scenes skip over where special effects should have been, cant afford, just skip the frame and hope the viewers don't realize. lol. I shall end with one word, awful.