Another of the current pseudo-intellectual looks into existentialism set in a futuristic and minimalist world where everything is presented in shades of greys and browns. This is starting to become rather repetitive already… Only the good performance of Colin Farrell, who fortunately is the person who spends most time on the screen, and the stereotypical, but nonetheless, effective score that makes us at least feel something are the only salvable elements of this film.

One day Yang (Justin H. Min), the robotic child of Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) malfunctions. Both parents, heavily pressured by the little adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) who has been basically raised by Yang, find themselves with the hard work of trying to fix him and bringing him “back to life”. Throughout this quest Jake and Kyra will have to reassess their role as parents while also they will get to uncover a deeper mystery surrounding Yang.

To start off, the film falls already totally flat in all the conflictive and philosophical points that it wants to raise. First, it seems like the robot malfunction will only be an excuse to show how both the characters of Farrell and Turner-Smith struggle into a transition to become more involved and active parents, now that their “AI nanny” is not available anymore. That perspective is basically disregarded very easily when we seem to transition to what had been the sibling/paternal relationship of Yang with Mika, that quickly moves to Yang with Jake, then briefly Yang with Kyra, and even Yang with who seems to be his partner Ada (Haley Lu Richardson). Therefore, we do clearly see how the intention behind this is showing how the character of Yang actually impacted the lives of not only little Mika but the entire family, but the case is that all those interactions become so much formulaic and brief that their power easily dissipates. Above any other of the interactions, the most cringey of them all is the one between Yang and Kyra, as they endeavour into a classic cliché-filled conversation about death and “the end” that solely feels as an excuse to give some screen time to the otherwise absent Turner-Smith.

That weak story is accompanied by a visual landscape that is starting to get quite tedious and unoriginal when making this sort of realistic sci-fi movies set in a near future. They all seem to have the same architecture and sets, and they all seem to use the same palette of colours. Besides, they also seem to present the same mood and tone. There is nothing wrong in trying to make a melancholic and non-flashy sci-fi, it is just that is quickly becoming the standard and rule through which all this sort of stories builds upon showing some hints of unoriginality and lack of dare and experimentation.

The only visual element that shows a bit of will to do something different is a brief sequence with a sort of montage with various images. The result of this collage is once again quite standard and just feel like a cheap edit for a video archive or music video, but at least it is something that to a certain extent derails from the obvious choices on this type of movies.

The performances suffer from that same lack of rhythm and stale nature, the only person that seems to show some humanity inside these coerced limits is Colin Farrell whose perception and feelings for Yang clearly evolve throughout the film. On the other hand, the rest of characters they just seem as robots themselves, you can understand such behaviour from Yang as that is what he is, but the rest… They are just as bland as him with no reason to be.

The other cheesy element, the score. Once again, the score also feels like it has been basically downloaded from a cheap soundtrack archive and inserted to the film in order to obtain the emotion that the story is clearly not able to deliver on its own. This would be another weak aspect to highlight from the film, but here it is maybe because I am an easily emotional person, that even if the tunes and melodies are as routinary as you could get, they still had some effect on me. Therefore, here we find ourselves with a strange position of being critical with the form but admitting its influence as well (which it does not mean that it has to translate to everyone alike).

After Yang is at the end of the day an unremarkable and unoriginal film where its well-intentioned depth can be completely dismissed as its core story and structure is fundamentally flawed. Still, the ok acting by part of the cast (basically Colin Farrell and Justin H. Min) and some clear choices to get a cheap response from the audiences save to a certain extent the film from being a complete wreck.