You know what Daft Punk's Electroma felt like? It felt like Daft Punk were making a music video, but wound up with too much footage and instead turned it into a movie.
Actually, that's exactly what happened. This movie started out as a music video for Daft Punk's song, "Human After All," but they got a little too ambitious and made it into a movie, and there are some things about it that work. The filming is very artistic; the message is nice, taking a spin on the classic Pinocchio moral of wanting to be human and mixing it with undertones about plastic surgery; the music—when there is any—is nice; and the acting is fairly decent, getting the message through despite the fact that we can't see anyone's face or hear what they're saying. The problem is that when you take a five-minute music video and expand its plot to a feature-length movie, you have to pad it out with extended shots, bizarre editing, and incredibly slow pacing. It definitely would have worked better as a music video, or even as a longer music video at ten minutes. But it's not a complete waste. Thanks to the Internet, fans have made several alternate cuts of Electroma. Many switch out the soundtrack with Daft Punk music to fill in the blank spaces, and there are even some fan visions of what the movie would have looked like in its intended form as a music video for Human After All. If you're going to check out any version of Electroma, watch those versions. I don't know how much of this is bias on my part, seeing how amazing their earlier film Interstella 5555 was and how underwhelming this was as a followup, but I would only recommend this movie if you're a huge fan of art films.
Actually, that's exactly what happened. This movie started out as a music video for Daft Punk's song, "Human After All," but they got a little too ambitious and made it into a movie, and there are some things about it that work. The filming is very artistic; the message is nice, taking a spin on the classic Pinocchio moral of wanting to be human and mixing it with undertones about plastic surgery; the music—when there is any—is nice; and the acting is fairly decent, getting the message through despite the fact that we can't see anyone's face or hear what they're saying. The problem is that when you take a five-minute music video and expand its plot to a feature-length movie, you have to pad it out with extended shots, bizarre editing, and incredibly slow pacing. It definitely would have worked better as a music video, or even as a longer music video at ten minutes. But it's not a complete waste. Thanks to the Internet, fans have made several alternate cuts of Electroma. Many switch out the soundtrack with Daft Punk music to fill in the blank spaces, and there are even some fan visions of what the movie would have looked like in its intended form as a music video for Human After All. If you're going to check out any version of Electroma, watch those versions. I don't know how much of this is bias on my part, seeing how amazing their earlier film Interstella 5555 was and how underwhelming this was as a followup, but I would only recommend this movie if you're a huge fan of art films.