Netflix Sci-Fi Comedy Gives The Office Star A Perfect Family Movie
Next Gen, now streaming on Netflix, is a great film to watch with or without your kids as it deals, much like an anime film, with serious issues, it has heartwarming moments, it’s funny, and it’s grown-up in a lot of ways. Yes, the kids will love it, but so will the adults. It’s the best kind of animated movie.
Next Gen
My daughter has a deep interest in all things anime, manga, and Chinese and Japanese inspired, so of course, when she found Next Gen on Netflix she had to watch it.
The movie is a Canadian-American-Chinese co-production with influences from all three cultures, and it is fascinating to watch them all unfold in 105 minutes. Years later, my kids and I still get excited to sit down and watch it.
Next Gen opens up with the story of a young girl, Mai (Charlyne Yi), whose father left her and her mother and has since died. She now lives alone with her mother, Molly (Constance Wu).
Molly, emotionally wrecked by the betrayal of her husband, has turned to robots for all of her needs and wants in life. Set in a futuristic universe, the world of Next Gen allows for Molly to have AI handle everything, including her personal robot, a Q-Bot. Mai cannot see robots as anything other than the things that keep her mother from her.
Q-Bots
Next Gen shows us several opening scenes of Molly virtually ignoring Mai for some sort of technology.
We also see that Mai is a kind of loner at school, with more popular kids on the soccer team bullying and teasing Mai. Mai is an angry middle-schooler with no healthy outlets.
When her mother drags her to the latest product launch at IQ Robotics, Mai leaves her mother, disgusted at her fangirling over the robots. Mai finds herself in a backroom, where she unwittingly trips onto a new generation of Q-Bots. She accidentally activates one of them, 7723 (John Krasinski).
A New Friendship
This next gen robot then follows Mai out of the building, and the police give chase. 7723 ends up getting shot down and falls hundreds of feet out of the sky, below highway overpasses, into Mai’s backyard.
As a result of the fall, it has damaged its memory core. When Mai finds 7723, she is irritated and tries to push him away. Then, she sees his weapons system and figures she can use him against her bullies.
It is at this point of Next Gen that the movie gets really interesting. Mai and 7723 build a beautiful relationship, with 7723 creating core memories of their fun times together.
Sadly, Mai is still broken from her own trauma and continues to use 7723 in increasingly dangerous ways, at one point ordering him to fire on one of her enemies. When 7723 refuses, Mai tries to end their relationship.
Battling A Major Corporation
In the background of this budding friendship, the CEO of IQ Robotics, Justin Pin (Jason Sudeikis) has been plotting to have his next gen robots destroy all of humanity. This part of the plot is unfolding as the corporation is on the hunt for 7723.
Mai also has a foul-mouthed dog, Mom (Michael Pena) who repeatedly finds himself in the middle of the drama. As Mai and 7723 try to come to terms, and Krasinski’s 7723 worries that he doesn’t have the storage to keep his lovely memories of his time with Mai, Mai’s mother also has to find her way out of sadness. And the whole family has to battle a major tech corporation.
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GFR SCORE
It’s a wonderful ride with lots of interesting plot points. And while some might complain that Next Gen doesn’t really know its audience, I would argue that those of us who love the movie found it just fine. I recommend this movie to anyone who loves a great, complex sci-fi with bits of darkness sprinkled throughout.
