The better moments are in the friction between M3GAN and her human companions; the eccentricities of her being programmed for children clashing with simmering anger from the first film. It’s better (and funnier) in building on the adversarial relationships made in the first film; the best callback sees her physically forcing Gemma to sit and listen to her belting out an insufferable radio song after a pep talk.
It’s better still when the comedy crosses with sincere questions about M3GAN’s personhood, and that she phyically feels this believable is a credit to the film’s animatronics team. It’s less charming, however, when M3GAN speaks like Bender from Futurama (“Alright, meat sacks”), or worse, a Deadpool-esque figure who yells things like, “Hold on to your vaginas!” before recklessly driving a supercar.
When Johnstone’s not aggressively expanding M3GAN lore, there’s some alignment between M3GAN’s (misguided and amusingly morbid) attempts at winning over her human companions, and M3GAN 2.0’s own charm offensive. In all of its quips and surprisingly energetic action, it’s riffing on Mission Impossible and Terminator 2 plotting and it’s actively trying to be a crowd pleaser. But the filmmaker sometimes overextends: some of the fights do become a little numbing after a while.
Similarly, for a sequel where the main character is hounded by the mistakes of the their past, M3GAN 2.0 runs back a few of the same sticking points — namely some laborious pacing which, here, is exacerbated by the sheer amount of story there is. It’s hard not to wish for a little more economy, especially when there are so many moments where the appeal of a sillier follow-up feel clearer. Despite occasionally indulging its worse instincts, there’s still a surprising amount of fun to be had with M3GAN 2.0 – a bigger and funnier sequel which could stand to pull back on both of those elements.
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