A modern-day movie that already appears to not have aged well, Replicas is another misplaced notch on Keanu Reeves's career belt. An appealing premise is entirely derailed with a completely absurd first half of remarkably dumb decisions and gaping plot holes, leaving the A-list actor fumbling his way through a mistake in between John Wicks. Love him or hate him, Keanu Reeves attempts to sell his character's remorse of losing his family and his determination of bringing them back. But pairing Reeves's unconventional acting style with a poorly executed sci-fi results in a disaster that thankfully improves in the second half only due to conventional thriller tropes and a more believable storyline.
One of the glaring problems of Replicas is that Will Foster, a driven synthetic biologist, acts impulsively after the death of his family and continues to draw from his amateurish ways. With the help from his coworker/sidekick, Ed (played by Thomas Middleditch), Will goes about cloning and uploading recovered consciousness of his dead family in a poorly planned manner. The result is disturbing, embarrassing, and slightly comical as Will juggles the absence of his family, calling in sick for his wife and responding to cringeworthy texts for his daughter. A lot of potentially messier scenes are conveniently skipped for the sake of progression; it's too bad the director didn't have the sense to skip past several more.
Due to the botch work of the first half, the second half acquires a delightful sigh of relief and entertains viewers with familiar mediocrity as it was meant to. Unfortunately, the entire movie contains sub-mediocre CGI, turning the sigh of relief into more of a sigh of pity. Effects from Terminator 2, a film released 28 years ago, could easily give the choppy and blurry robot in Replicas a run for its money.
Did Keanu Reeves know the eyesore he was getting himself into?
I hope so.
But at the same time, I hope not.
I hope The One has no regrets. How inspiring would it be if Keanu Reeves looked at the script, met with twitchy Thomas Middleditch, deduced the budget for the CGI, and still agreed to the project, not because of a paycheck, but because he believed in the movie's potential and wanted to create something bold. Yes, Replicas is a bit too bold (perhaps sloppy is more accurate), but I don't regret my time seeing it in theaters. I've never had such a movie going experience before. Sigh. It's just a pity the movie turned out so cheap and underwhelming.