MOM VS. MACHINE (2021)

MOM VS. MACHINE (2021)

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(Sci-Fi, Comedy, It’s Not Just a Food Printing Machine) [Short]

He tells me he’s a spell caster. What does that even mean?

In this one, Kamal’s son Vyom is pretty much a loser that treats his mom like crap. He decides he needs a 3D food-printing machine that is basically just there to demonstrate how useless she is. As it turns out, Kamala far from useless as she engages in an all-out battle with the food printer to save her family. 

First off, when I say Vyom is a loser, I am not saying that he doesn’t have a job or is lazy. I am saying he’s leeching off his mom’s kindness and he’s an arrogant self-obsessed jerk. She also realizes that her own mother Seema is literally enabling Vyom even more. 

One thing that is really scary and cool about this food processor is that it’s either AI-driven or command-driven, but it gets its feelings hurt pretty easily just like Kamal. Having said that, it seems like Kamal has a reason to be upset where the food processor really doesn’t. Vyom does go off on it, but yeah, the reaction is bonkers. 

Acting wise we get Nimet Kanji (Battlestar Galactica, Continuum) who does a really good job in this role as Kamal. In a short period of time, she has to show a wide range of emotions and pulls it off. Praneet Akilla (Nancy Drew) is probably great in other stuff, but the acting was iffy here and I really couldn’t stand his character Vyom in case that wasn’t already evident. Balinder Johal (Sanctuary) is good as Seema, but only gets a few brief lines and comes across as a pretty cold person. There is a very short sequence where Kamal is talking to 6 friends online, so other actresses are introduced but the screen time is even shorter than Seema’s so that really doesn’t play a significant role here other than to be voices encouraging Kamal to stand up for herself. 

There is a lot accomplished in the short 13 minutes in which the story is actually told. I am not going to say the effects are mind-blowing, but they are effective. There is a slight BIG BUG feel to the machine. When it comes to the score everything is pretty minimal and there is really no soundtrack to speak of. 

The message of the film is slightly complicated. On one hand, it’s hard to imagine that Vyom is going to stop being a jerk after all this if his mom says even one little thing that he doesn’t like. On the other hand, she did do something in this short that I would think would actually change everything, so maybe there is hope for these two after all. 

Overall MOM VS. MACHINE is a pretty cool concept that I think would actually make a great movie if the idea was expanded on. I guess in some way BIG BUG does that, but for the most part, that movie is a dumpster fire loaded with terrible characters. 

This one gets a 3 out of 7. I think there are too many things they could have done that would have made this quite a bit more fun and engaging. Instead going through all the effort to introduce what they do without explanation kind of makes this feel flat where it didn’t need to be.

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