Next Gen

An animated film built on the relationship between a robot and a child. Mai is a teenager in a city full of technology who gets along with nobody. Her mother prefers talking to her own robot to talking to her. One day Mai comes across a prototype called 7723 in a hidden laboratory. The robot was built for military purposes and its memory is limited; everything it learns is written over what came before. The two become friends. But Mai starts using the robot for her own anger and directs it at people at school. That is the film's real subject: the robot does whatever it is taught. The second line is the company itself: a technology firm that releases a new model every year, persuades people to keep upgrading, and the real plan behind it. It was made as a Chinese-Canadian coproduction and shown directly on a streaming service. John Krasinski voices 7723. A suitable choice for anyone who likes science-fiction animation and robot stories. For a viewer looking for originality, the narrative follows the genre's known templates; its real difference is that the lead is not likeable and the film works at correcting that.