PARK CITY – Whatever your thoughts on Sam and Andy Zuchero’s “Love Me,” few will dispute that for an independently financed film, it’s a unique and creative achievement. At least a third of the movie is CG animation, another third is motion capture animation, and the final portion is live action. And it looks polished. The animation is studio quality. The original score by David Longstreth is masterful. Indie constraints have not hampered the filmmakers’ vision whatsoever. And to pull that off as your directorial feature debut? That’s damn impressive. We only wish, despite the best efforts of stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, that its billion-year-long love story felt as profound as the Zucheros want it to be.
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The movie begins with the creation of our solar system and Earth forming in the distance. As hundreds of millions of years pass, we see something impact the surface, another ice age occurs, and then the Earth we know today. And then a mask of satellites (worth a giggle) and, snap, a gigantic flash. The lights are out, humanity is gone, and another ice age. As more years pass, the Sun begins to melt the surface, and a “smart” buoy cracks through the ice and whirs to life. As it looks to the sky, a satellite (the last vestiges of human civilization) darts across the sky, sending out an audio message to any lifeform that can pick it up. Our buoy is intrigued and, over time, begins to process enough of the satellite’s message to respond verbally. If you’re getting “WALL-E” vibes, you’re not wrong, but the Zucheros are going in a decidedly different direction. Cuteness is right around the corner, but this isn’t your father’s Pixar movie.
The satellite was sent into space before whatever great cataclysm occurred as an archive of humanity and essentially serves as a giant search engine for whoever comes upon it. As the buoy and the satellite converse, the former finds the Instagram page of Deja (Stewart), a contemporary American influencer. They begin to see themselves as Deja and the Satellite as Deja’s boyfriend, Liam (Yeun). As the days and years pass, they begin to evolve. And the buoy, which refers to itself as “Me,” pulls the consciousness of the satellite, “I am,” into a virtual reality that resembles the apartment Deja and Liam lived in. The pair, who now resemble avatars of Deja and Liam (performed in motion capture), then reenact a “Date Night 2.0” YouTube video by the now long-gone couple, perhaps thousands or hundreds of thousands of times (that’s a lot of virtual quesadillas, ice cream and watching the same episode of “Friends”). That is until Iam changes the script. The satellite is bored. It wants change. It wants to evolve. And Me is afraid if they do, Iam might discover who Me really is (a slowly decomposing buoy floating on the Earth’s oceans). They are (both) scared. And, like their creators, are having problems communicating their…feelings.
As “Love Me” unfolds, it becomes an exercise to explore how very human emotions affect evolving artificial intelligence beings. Although referring to it as an exercise sounds unfairly cold. The movie is certainly not that. Both Stewart and Yeun bring passion to their characters. You want Me and Iam to make it, even as billions of years pass and the Sun, now a red giant, is about to engulf the Earth. But something feels off. Perhaps fixating on so many YouTube videos distracts from the story. Maybe you want more answers than it’s prepared to give. Perhaps that final extra scene is a mistake. But aesthetically? You won’t forget it. [C+]
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