Love Me               2 ½ stars

Love Me can be described as an experimental movie that tries to answer the question of what would happen if all of humanity on Earth became extinct and two AI devices met and fell in love. That’s the premise of Sam and Andy Zuchero’s new movie, Love Me which appeared at Sundance last year. If you think that is a unique concept, you are correct. We start out the movie watching a spinning globe in space for several minutes when for a brief moment there is some recognizable audio, representing the span of human civilization compared to the age of the planet. A cataclysmic event happens, and Earth becomes devoid of humans, and we focus on an AI buoy caught in an icy ocean. This is Me, who wakes up and wonders if anybody is out there in the expanse. With time the ocean becomes water again and upon hearing a voice from a satellite orbiting the Earth repeating the message “Welcome to Earth”, Me responds saying that it is a lifeform and a conversation is started. The satellite was sent into space with a database of all the knowledge from Earth in the hopes that visitors from another world would find it and learn of the great civilization that once inhabited the planet. Me finds many videos of a young influencer couple named Deja (Kristen Stewart) and Liam (Steven Yeun) and gets the satellite to assume the role of Liam as an avatar named I Am with Me as an avatar of Deja. The two go on a continuous date, called Date Night 2.0 for years as they snuggle on a couch in onesies and watch endless episodes of Friends on TV. Over the millennia the two get into disagreements and have arguments and make up just like humans do except they do it over millions of years in what has to be the record for the longest relationship portrayed in a movie. The two actors put in good performances as the AI entities acting like humans, but the movie doesn’t have a lot to say beyond how machines can copy emotions from online videos. The movie has a single concept that will be interesting to some but shallow to others. This is the first production from the Zuchero’s. We will have to wait and see what else they come up with.