The idea of pitting technology against humanity is nothing new. In fact, it isn’t even remotely new given the barrage to films that feature a technological antagonist. Age of Ultron, Terminator Genisys, Transcendence, I Robot, Eagle Eye, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Total Recall, Elysium, Robocop, Ex Machina, Chappie, and those are just from the last 15 years.
So in stomps “Jexi,” a film written and directed by Jon Lucas (“The Hangover,” “21 & Over”) and Scott Moore (“The Hangover,” “21 & Over”) about a man who’s new Siri-esque phone assistant Jexi ends up making his life a living hell to try and make it better. It’s also a comedy, but that’s being very liberal with the term.
In the past, Lucas and Moore have created a string of unfunny comedies (“Four Christmases,” “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” “The Change-Up,” “Bad Moms,” “Office Christmas Party,” “A Bad Moms Christmas,” and “21 & Over”) but those at least had some redeeming qualities. Actors who were charming or committed, a handful of jokes that landed, or even a semi-interesting premise.
There’s nothing to “Jexi” though. None of those things are applicable. Nobody seems like they want to be here, even people who are clearly popping up for cameos. Adam Devine (“Isn’t It Romantic,” “Workaholics”) seems like he was told this would be a sketch comedy short and it just kept getting dragged out on him. Alexandra Shipp (“Love, Simon,” “X-Men: Apocalypse”) is doing the most fake smiles to paycheck ratio in recent memory, and Michael Peña (“Ant-Man,” “The Martian”) is just…probably trying to most but is also without a doubt the most egregious and annoying.
Even Rosy Byrne (“Neighbors,” “Spy (2015)”) isn’t really acting, since all she has to do is provide a monotone voice. It makes the handful of lines that are semi-threatening or could be worth half a chuckle fall flat because it’s 2019 and hearing a Siri voice say “fuck” isn’t funny anymore, if it ever was. At least the humor is consistently bad. It doesn’t go for any stereotypes or inherently offensive humor. It is offensively bad, but at least it sticks to f-bombs in every sentence and dick jokes.
Its also just boring. At 84 minutes, this clocks in at shorter than “The Addams Family (2019)” which opened the same weekend, and it somehow feels over two hours long. A handful of moments are amusingly absurd, but it isn’t because they’re actually funny. Moments where Devine is being chased by a self-driving car that is somehow controlled by Jexi or where he gets a promotion out of the blue that is insinuated to be because Jexi put the person who used to have it into the hospital aren’t well done, they’re so blatantly awful and bizarre that its hysterical that some executive thought they would work.
It also completely wastes what could have been a great supporting cast. Besides Michael Peña doing the most acting of his career, Charlyne Yi (“Stephen Universe,” “Next Gen”) and Ron Funches (“Trolls”) are here, and it seems like they lost a bet. They’re clearly trying to be genuine or charming, but it’s as if the script that they’re given is a cure for any decency in a human being.
Now, it would be bad enough if this film was just unfunny and boring. However, there are really really weird things in “Jexi” that are just kind of baffling. For example, everyone in this movie love “Days of Thunder,” the Tom Cruise Nascar film. Not just like it, they love it! Multiple characters bond over their obsession with the film, going so far as to quote it multiple times. When Kid Cudi shows up, playing himself for some reason, he and Devine bond OVER THEIR LOVE OF “DAYS OF THUNDER!”
That’s not even touching on the movie’s sudo-“her” like romantic subplot towards the end of the film. It’s as if you handed a dude-bro frat guy a copy of Spike Jonze’s “her,” he watched it, returned it, claimed it was a pile of garbage and that he could write a better film, and then he did.
There’s a layer of this film that also seems to be a cautionary tale about technology and its impact on society, but…it feels almost 15 years too late? Devine’s character is supposed to be this loser guy who obsesses over his phone, but he uses it in normal ways. He uses the GPS to get to work, orders food at home, watches Netflix, browses Facebook. Things that seemingly everyone else in the film do but aren’t chastised for. It also fails to address that some people legitimately need their phones for work or everyday life.
When Devine is harassed by a phone store employee, played by a very glazed over Wanda Sykes (“Over the Hedge,” “The New Adventures of Old Christine”), she lambasts him for wanting a new phone after his old one was smashed. Yet no one thinks to say “Hey, he lives alone in a big city. Maybe he needs a phone for, I don’t know, basic communication?” It’s 2019, they’re integrated into society now. The film just spirals out of control on a layer of logic so thin you’d break it by breathing on it. The technological sense of a 65-year-old boomer and the humor of a 19-year-old frat dude have come together to make one of the worst comedies of the last two decades.
By the time one of the supporting characters tells Devine “Oh you’re a writer, that’s way scarier than what I do! You’re like a superhero of paper!” it’s officially time to check out and let Lucas and Moore fondle themselves over their frat house “Black Mirror” episode genius in peace. More enjoyment could be had playing with a bricked iPhone 6S. 0.5/5
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