Peter Bradshaw 

Transcendence review – Johnny Depp is less attractive here than Zoolander

Sleepy-eyed Johnny Depp is an implausible genius in this unclever sci-fi movie about artificial intelligence, says Peter Bradshaw
  
  

Johnny Depp transcendence
Heavy-handed … Johnny Depp in Transcendence. Photograph: Peter Mountain/AP

This is like a heavy-handed and humourless version of Spike Jonze's postmodern comedy Her, mulched in with the old sci-fi novel Donovan's Brain, about keeping someone's brain alive in a tank. We are invited to believe in Johnny Depp as a mathematical genius in the field of artificial intelligence.

He is the megabrainy Dr Will Caster who decides to "transcend" his puny bioform and upload his entire consciousness – that whole magnetic personality of his – to a specially built, warehouse-sized mainframe in the desert in which his activities become increasingly disturbing. Unfortunately, with his zonked-out face and barista facial hair, Depp looks as if his entire mind could be comfortably housed in one of Alan Sugar's Amstrad PCWs.

Rebecca Hall plays his adoring wife: sleepy-eyed Mr Depp's performance is less than 100% focused on the idea that he is supposed to be married to her. Paul Bettany is lumbered with the role of Concerned Best Friend, and Morgan Freeman plays a scientist – a respected colleague and someone whose wisdom is massively valued. Freeman looks upon Depp with an expression of sorrowing concern and priestly understanding in the same 4:1 ratio as when he was playing Nelson Mandela thinking about apartheid.

The whole idea of Depp evolving into some HAL computer with his lovely chops on the screen is a less attractive idea than, say, Derek Zoolander doing the same thing, preserving himself for all time within the top-secret research division of his Institute for Kids Who Can't Read Good.

 

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