The film follows the titular killer android M3GAN, played again physically by Amie Donald and voiced again by Jenna Davis (“Treehouse Detectives,” “Chicken Girls”), newly rebuilt by her creator Gemma, played by Allison Williams (“Girls,” “Get Out”), after being destroyed at the end of the first film. Gemma wants to use M3GAN to find and defeat a rogue military android named AMELIA, played by Ivanna Sakhno (“Ahsoka,” “The Spy Who Dumped Me”), who’s hunting down and killing each person involved with her creation, including Gemma as she was based on M3GAN’s original design. Also reprising their roles are Violet McGraw (“The Haunting of Hill House,” “Separation”) as Cady, Gemma’s niece and M3GAN’s original owner, Jen Van Epps (“Don’t Make Me Go,” “One Lane Bridge”) as Tess, one of Gemma’s co-workers, and Brian Jordan Alvarez (“English Teacher,” “80 for Brady”) as Cole, one of Gemma’s other co-workers.
Returning director Gerard Johnstone (“The Jaquie Brown Diaries,” “Housebound”), who now also is on as a co-writer, and returning writer Akela Cooper (“Malignant,” “The Nun 2”) have certainly crafted a work that makes large creative changes from the original material. The campiness, silly nature of the original film is still here, but far more intentionally than the “happy accident” nature of the first film’s viral moments. Therefore, while things are certainly campier than even before, it can feel more manufactured than the first film’s more natural silliness. It doesn’t help that the film is longer than the first and lacks the tight focus from M3GAN’s original rampage, bringing in numerous additional characters and subplots that manage to be either boring or actively unfunny.
A borderline cameo from Jermaine Clement (“Flight of the Conchords,” “What We Do In the Shadows”) as a tech-obsessed billionaire feels completely out of step with the rest of the film’s sense of humor, and the third act of the film forgets Tess exists and has Cole take a larger spotlight that doesn’t fit the character. That’s not even mentioning the completely forgettable FBI agents that pop up before Johnstone and Cooper completely forget about them until the last ten minutes. That’s not even getting into the completely nonsensical central threat that, when revealed, feels as though it was thought up by someone who saw “Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning” and wanted to dumb it way way down.
Luckily, when the film does refocus on Gemma, Cady, and M3GAN on their quest, things are far more entertaining. M3GAN’s emotional journey here is surprisingly satisfying, without sacrificing any of her snark and attitude, with Davis’s vocal performance working exceptionally well. Williams and McGraw get a more standard “parent and teen child butt heads” plotline, and it works well enough, without ever working beyond basic levels. Sakhno is a fantastically fun addition to the cast, working well against Donald and Davis and injecting a fun adversarial relationship into the fare.
As a whole, the film looks like its budget, with a large assortment of average soundstage-built sets and some garish green screen for a few open landscape action sequences. Despite the shift to action from horror, Johnstone and his team have fun with the fight sequences, taking gleeful advantage of the fact that their heroine and villainess are both robotic, throwing logic out the window. By the time the third act hits, any semblance of realism has been completely ejected in favor of a freewheeling junk food type of cinematic fun. It’s certainly nothing groundbreaking, but when firing on all cylinders, it's undeniably a good time.
“M3GAN 2.0” changes a great deal from the original film, and while it's still absolutely a fun and campy time, it's certainly not without its own issues. For every action sequence and borderline spy parody featuring M3GAN, there’s another with an utterly forgettable character or plot point. This sequel simply can’t hold a candle to the simplicity, tension, or inadvertent camp of the first film. It’s cinematic junk food that invites you to turn off your brain and go along for the ride. There are certainly still other better examples of cinematic junk food out there, but you’ll still have a good time with this psychotic robot regardless. 3/5