FINCH
FINCH. Miguel Sapochnik, director. Craig Luck and Ivor Powell, script. Robert Zemeckis, producer (one of five).[1] Tom Hanks, star. USA/UK: Amblin Partners et al. (production) / Apple TV+ (distribution), 2021.[2][3]
IMDb quick summary: "On a post-apocalyptic earth, a robot, built to protect the life of his creator's beloved dog, learns about life, love, friendship and what it means to be human."[4]
Whatever the budget, essentially a small movie that some older viewers might see as a classic episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964),[5] with a substantial dollop of the schmaltz of a Hallmark Special,[6] crossed with CAST AWAY, [7] a story from the Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" series, and a cleaned-up version of A BOY AND HIS DOG.
(Plot element revealed:) Technically, the film is a variety of tragi-comedy (sic), with the climax the death of the protagonist, and the denouement suggesting a slightly new and potentially recovering world centering on the one visible couple. Except the world we see outside of northern California — on a road-trip from St. Louis to San Francisco — is a dystopic, blasted and (anthropogenically) depopulated wasteland, and the couple aren't "a boy and a girl" but an Asimovian AI robot and his (in gender his) dog.
Open to an accusation of "the Pinocchio complex," with a robot who wants to become human — as in, e.g., in "The Bicentennial Man" — or a bit more generally the accusation of "Spam": a robot that's metal on the outside and meat within (except the robot here is skeletal, and pretty much lacks an inside). More exactly, the robot does take on what we humans are pleased to see as human characteristics, but without the human viciousness that permeates much of the presumably global background of the story. Along with hints of human connectedness and decency at the end of the film — and a bare hint in an otherwise severely dystopian sequence earlier — the bond between a pretty much innocent robot and a non-heroic but admirable dog make for as happy an ending as would be legitimate.
Note also a cute small robot of a dog-like nature, to whom compare and contrast the robots,[8] especially Dewey,[9] in SILENT RUNNING (1972) — [10] and with the biological dog in the film.
Mild Cautions:
Rather flippantly — older viewers subject to musical earworms, may find Don McLean's "American Pie" in their heads for a day or so.
More seriously — after disasters, people generally cooperate. The backstory of FINCH has Americans, anyway, going full-on Lord of the Flies[11] murderous. Use of that trope may contribute a bit to a self-fulfilling prophecy, somewhat ironically, if it happens, for a movie dealing with trust.
RDE, with thanks to Barb and Roger Mason, finishing, 7-8Nov21