M3gan (Amazon Prime)

WEBVTT

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. Today. In

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the show, we were talking about
Megan, obviously a massive hit theatrically.

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It is now streaming on Amazon Prime. So if you missed it in theaters

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like me, and maybe thought,
you know, it was just gimmicky and

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kind of silly, there was this
viral clip of the Meghan doll dancing that

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was on TikTok for a while and
you thought, yeah, you know,

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it seems kind of like slight and
you weren't sure about watching it. It's

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really good, it's really fun,
it's very well made. It's totally worth

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watching. I think I definitely had
the wrong impression of it as being more

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slight than it is, and also
it has a bit more teeth to it

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than I anticipated, so I would
say that it's even better than I expected.

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I mean, obviously I knew it
was very successful, but I just

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wasn't sure. You know, we've
seen kind of killer doll the movies before,

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so I wasn't sure if it would
be something that would really be my

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cup of tea. But I saw
her name was on Prime. I watched

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it. I thought it was good. I think it's worth watching. And

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I'll discuss why this is an almost
spoiler free episode. There's a couple of

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things at the end that I'll warn
you about, but other than that,

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it's you can listen to this and
it won't affect your reviewing of the film.

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So Alison Williams has carved out this
niche where she plays these really uniquely

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unlikable characters. If you think about
her character and Girls, and her character

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get Out, and then her character
in this movie, they're they're all,

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you know. The character and Girls
especially was like it's a very unique thing.

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Usually you're either the villain or you're
the hero mostly speaking, and in

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all of these parts, well,
i mean get Out, she's no spoilers,

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but yeah, it's you know,
uh in Girls in this movie,

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it's like there's a there's a prickliness
to the character that is unusual. So

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in this story, the essential premise
of the story really is that Alison Williams

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is a designer of toys that you
know, are use ai and interact with

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children, and her niece is orphaned, and to get out of having to

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like actually interact with her niece,
she basically builds this robot girl that essentially

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becomes like a parent to the little
girl she's supposed to be watching. So

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that's already kind of interesting, and
you know, it's it paints her not

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necessarily the most flattering light. And
then she has a neighbor who the dog

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keeps bothering her, and she straight
out tells the neighbor, I'm gonna get

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your dog put down or something that
effect. Like She's like, if you

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don't put your dog down, I
will, which is a pretty bold thing

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to have the main character of your
movie say to somebody. Obviously, you

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know, you have to know that
the majority of the audience is going to

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go out on that person as soon
as they say that. So I really

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like that about the movie. I
liked that it made her very imperfect and

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flawed, and it kind of redeems
areas it goes along, but it definitely

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has like a mean satiric edge,
which I think you kind of need.

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I think if they had played this
one hundred percent straight, I don't know

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that it would have worked. So
I liked that part of it a lot.

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We do have a category on the
show, something stupid that probably only

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bothered me. I'm willing to bet
this didn't bother percent of the audience.

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But the way that it's filmed,
and it might just be a question of

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you know, maybe there's a frame
that I blinked and missed or something,

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but I could have sworn. The
way they filmed it, it made it

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seem like Alison Williams wrote the code
for this doll. That is incredible.

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That is so intelligent it can adapt
to any possible stimulus by like pulling like

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one all nighter. That's kind of
the way it seemed. Now later in

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the story, there's some line about
remember how long it took. I think

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Megan says, remember how long it
took to get my operating system to where

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it is now. We used to
stay up until four am talking about Jane

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Austin, and I was like,
did they like that? Did I miss

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that? It almost felt like there
was like, was that a line added

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later or something. That was the
one part that kind of bugged me.

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But again it's sort of it's quipped. It's a small quibble. I have

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to say. I think the creepiest
part of the whole movie is that Megan

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sings Rihanna's Titanium to help the little
girls Katie go to sleep, which is

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incredibly creepy, and that worked really
well. I mean, it's a very

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modern movie, right, It has
a very modern accessibility to it. I

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think the success the film is very
much attributable to the modern era. You

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know. I think if that clip
of Megan dancing had not gone viral,

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maybe the movie would not have been
as successful as it was. It might

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have been more of like a cult
classic kind of thing. It's not a

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new concept. Like I said,
we've seen we have seen, you know,

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killer doll movies before. That has
been done before. But it shows

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you that, you know, to
make a good movie, you don't have

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to have this like staggeringly like no
one has ever done this before. It's

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more like can you find a wrinkle
on something on a classic kind of template

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and really well executed. And that's
what this movie is. It's it's it's

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a wrinkle on a template. But
it's done extremely well. It's very well

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executed. It's fun, it's funny. So it just it's they did a

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great job of executing this. It's
well directed, it's well acted, it's

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well scripted. It's just a fun
movie. It's also not too long.

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It's about an hour and forty minutes, which I love. I'll give me

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a movie that's like hour and a
half hour forty minutes that doesn't overstate it's

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welcome. You know, you're in
and you're out and you have satisfying experience.

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I don't know. I think we
as time has marched on for some

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reason. Anytime they have an event
movie, now it's got to be like

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two and a half hours, three
hours, Like why you know, some

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stories are meant to be movies,
they're not meant to be you know,

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essentially like a limited series in a
film. And I just really appreciated how

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economical it was. And it's just
I think perfectly timed, and I want

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to give them a credit that it
does have this It is sort of about

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something, right. This is the
ultimate don't give your kids the iPad movie.

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It's basically, as a parent,
is extremely tempting to just park your

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kid in front of a screen and
be like, all right, peace man

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and Megan is the ultimate expression of
that. If this actually existed, people

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absolutely would use it and abuse it, and you know, just be like,

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all right, you know, Megan's
got the suthing control all I'm gonna

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have a margarita. So it does. It's not just sort of like a

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high concept gimmick. I think there
is something underneath it that connects to real

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life stuff that you know, there's
just enough of that to give it some

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substance in addition to sort of the
horror and genre thrills. It's also great

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that the movie makes you suspicious of
other electronics, like it's almost like the

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Alexa of the house and Megan at
some point or like working together against Allison

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Williams. I really like the casting. I think Ronnie Chang as the boss

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is great and he should be in
more movies. He's really fun. The

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design of the doll also is really
smart, Like I'm sure they must have

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gone through a lot of different variations
of what the doll would look like,

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because it's it's so creepy that it's
a doll to be a friend to Little

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Girls. But the doll itself does
look more I guess older, for lack

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of a better word, even though
it's a small doll, and it's just

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it's eerie. It's unsettling. The
way that the doll looks make you makes

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you uncomfortable in a good way.
I think they smartly designed it so you

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kind of can't tell exactly what age
the doll is supposed to be, and

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you know the way the eyes are
and just the design of the face,

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the whole the whole thing about how
that doll is designed, how it moves,

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It's all done very cleverly. This
is a good movie I think,

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to look at if you are a
screenwriter, if you're somebody who you know

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is producing films. It just as
an example of like this is always going

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to work if you can figure out
a movie that is really I mean,

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this is very contained. It's basically
we're at the lab, we're at Alison

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Williams house, we're in some cars. That's pretty much it. And it's

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such a high concept premise that you
don't the contain nature of it is never

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noticeable. You never feel like it's
artificially contained. If you can come up

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with a concept like this that's simple, clean, high concept contained. You

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know, it's like, especially in
horror, I think that's always going to

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work. So this is a great
example of you know, horror has had

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a really good last couple of years, and it's kind of like the great

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hope for cinema frankly, because the
continuing success of original ideas and horror gives

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hope that the business will start embracing
those more in general. You know,

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Barbarian smile, Megan. The fact
that all of these movies were successful,

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theatrically significantly. I mean, Megan's
a massive hit like this I think is

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one of the more profitable movies of
the year it came out, they did

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some sort of analysis of its costs
and marketing versus the box office gross,

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and it was significantly profitable. So
the success of these movies I think bodes

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well for the future of cinema.
A little tiny spoilery thing here, So

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if you haven't seen Megan, I
guess to take off. So here's a

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little a little bit like a minute
of spoilers. When they kill Ronnie Chang

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at the of this movie. Everything
it's such a they've done such a good

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job of building up the narrative where
it's all about the company and working for

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the company and they're going to launch
the Megan and this that and the pressure

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from the boss, and then he
just gets knifed basically, and you sort

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of know as the audience, you're
like, oh, well, now we've

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entered a different part of the story, right. It's an escalation from which

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there can be no return, And
so I thought that worked so well.

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It kind of kicks off the third
act and then it just goes bananas.

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And I thought that from a pacing
perspective, it's just a very smart choice

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because it was like the world was
a certain way and had sort of certain

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almost safety rails, and as soon
as they killed Ronnie Jang, there's no

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more safety rails. So I thought
that worked really well. Also, So

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that is Megan. That's a show
for a day. I'd love to know

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what you think. Did you see
Megan in theaters? Are you now going

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to catch it on streaming? Would
you think about it? Let me know.

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You can always reach out to me
at Bennimore down on Twitter, Watch

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This Tonight on Instagram, watch This
Tonight podcast on TikTok, or you can

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do on our Facebook group. I
have something exciting in the works, as

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I have and before, I am
afraid to tell you because I don't want

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to drink it. If it does
end up happening, you know, you'll

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know immediately and I will shout it
from the rooftops. So I'll just leave

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dad in the air, and as
always, thank you so much for listening.

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If you like the show. The
biggest solid you can do, you

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know, is to just write a
review an Apple podcast. That is the

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most helpful thing you can do for
the show. Until next time, Bye bye,