Mark Reviews Movies: JEXI

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 10, 2019

The joke of a defective, cellphone-based virtual assistant, which attempts to control and possibly ruin a person's life, is a decent one. Jexi forgets that fact, essentially to its own ruin.

The phone is funny. It's brash. It's crude. It'll change one's food order, because it doesn't think the person making it needs the calories. On that note, it hurls insults that cut to the core of the target, and while most, if not all, of the real-world virtual assistants have some kind of filter on them, the one in this phone swears like it's going out of style.

In theory, the phone is behaving in such a way and doing all of these things to help its owner. Look at it as a form of tough love, enacted by a device that cannot feel love, which means that the phone just sounds like a jerk.

This gag, perhaps, only works because the voice of the phone is provided by Rose Byrne, whose tone is pleasant and whose rhythms of speech here are the monotony of a computer devising a response as it goes. Writers/directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have definitely made a one-joke movie, and it is, again, a decent joke. The filmmakers simply forgot to figure out a decent-enough reason to make it.

Basically, the gag begins as a blunt critique of how addicted to we have become to our handheld devices as a society. That's a fine point to make. The movie begins with our protagonist, a socially awkward man, staring at a cellphone at two point in his childhood. As an adult, he's doing the same thing—from the moment wakes up until he arrives at work (even holding the phone at arm's length while in the shower). On that trip, the frame is filled with strangers doing the same thing. Yes, it's not subtle, but hey, it is just the first five minutes of the movie.

The man is Phil (Adam Devine), and he's about as bland and boring as can be. When isn't on his way to or at work, he's sitting in his apartment. When a pair of co-workers invite him to play kickball and have a few drinks, he lies about plans and just spends the evening alone at home. Later on, he bumps into Cate (Alexandra Shipp), who owns a bike store, on the sidewalk. They chat for a bit, and then his phone is broken by a passerby. He's nearly crying as he brings the device into a store. The saleswoman calls him an addict in not so polite terms (which is amusing because it's Wanda Sykes doing the scolding).

All of this seems to be going somewhere, and admittedly, it does, because Phil eventually figures out that he doesn't need to be staring at a screen to be happy. In fact, he might be unhappy, because he spends so much time staring at a screen. That's the end goal. We know it's coming. What matters, though, is what's in between the setup and the resolution.

Let's take it as a given that the phone, which calls Phil "stupid" when he doesn't bother to read the user-end agreement on this fancy new virtual assistant, is funny, because it mostly is. What's to be done with it, though, as a joke, as a plot device, and as a commentary on people's increasing reliance on technology to make it through life?

To put it not so kindly, Lucas and Moore never figure that out, and they make the even bigger mistake of giving this phone to a protagonist who isn't just bland and boring. The man, clearly in his mid-to-late 30s, has the mindset of, at best, a teenager. He whines that he isn't good at talking to "girls." He can barely talk to Cate on the phone when Jexi, the virtual assistant, calls her, because Phil won't do it himself, and the actual conversation makes him sound like a stalker or a sex pest. As for the latter description, in one scene, Phil spends an inordinate amount of time with his pants around his ankles or off, trying to get the right angle for a photo of his genitals.

This is a role written for either a much younger actor or one with much more awkward charm than Devine. The plot, which seems to forget the central gag for long stretches, becomes a romantic comedy. That's an even worse decision, since Cate, who's noticeably younger than Phil, seems to have a good head on her shoulders. The juxtaposition of these two characters only makes Phil look worse.

To summarize, the phone is funny. The owner isn't. As a comedy, Jexi has a fine setup. It fails to provide a punch line.

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