Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
An orphaned teen hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.
The Electric State adapts Simon Stålenhag's visually striking graphic novel but struggles to translate its melancholic, atmospheric source material into a satisfying narrative. The plot is a fairly conventional road-trip quest that leans on familiar dystopian tropes without adding much depth, and the ending feels rushed and emotionally unearned. The acting is serviceable — Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt do competent work within the constraints of the script, but neither is given material to truly shine. Cinematography captures some of the retro-futuristic aesthetic of the source material reasonably well, with decent production design, though it never fully realizes the haunting visual poetry of Stålenhag's art. Novelty gets a modest bump for the distinctive post-war technological dystopia setting and the source material's unique world, but the Russo brothers' execution irons out much of what made that world singular, resulting in a film that feels more generic than its premise promises.