The year is 2045 in Big Bug, and a middle-aged man, Max (Stephane De Groodt), is desperate to get what Burgess Meredith would call a quick ride on the bologna pony.
The man is ready to throw a hail mary because he has to bring his teenage son along to Alice’s home (Elsa Zylberstein). She is also longing for Max’s touch until several unwanted guests arrive. Not the robots that help Alice live her life mind you, like Monique (Emily in Paris’s Claude Perron), a neurotic robot desperately trying to fit in that picks up on Alice’s sexual urges.
The unwanted guests are her ex-husband, Victor (Youssef Hajdi), their daughter, Nina, and his new romance, Jennifer (Claire Chust). They immediately get under each other’s skin. You also have Alice’s daughter and her nosy neighbor, Francoise (Isabelle Nanty), who stops by.
Unfortunately, when under the roof, the robotic help takes over, keeping all their human friends locked inside.
Why do you ask? To keep them safe from the robot uprising that is about to happen. And if they show the flesh beings the emotions, they are practicing. They will love them back. The robot revolt is led by an artificial intelligence called Yonyx, who looks like a modernized science-fiction race of villains from the movie Dark City.
They want to enslave all humans and rule the world. The longer they are stuck in lockdown, the more the humans begin to become empathetic, and their robots begin to understand human behavior.
By Big Bug’s third act, each ploy to escape is rebuffed, and the Vonyx have penetrated the home to pry the humans away from their robot guardian angels. The AI villains make them dance like trained monkeys for their lives. Instead of killing them, they can now be their servants if they do.
However, when the entire house puts on winter coats to nullify the thermal tracking, Monique steps in front of the Vonyx laser that shoots out of their finger. The target was Alice, and she sacrificed herself for her. This is when Nina flips the script, electrocuting the leader to escape the home.
Only now are more villains waiting. Now that Victor is back with Alice, Jennifer asks for a ride home with Max, who kicks his son out so he can take the beautiful young woman home (hey, fortune favors the brave, right?). This leaves his son, Nina, Alice, Victor, and Francoise outside the home.
More Vonyx shows up, but they are all intercepted and destroyed by a drone defense system because they accidentally tagged themselves as targets.
What is Big Bug all about? Well, it combines our modern reliance on technology with mental health stresses and behaviors caused by the current pandemic. Give credit to Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet for trying his hand at something creative and fresh, but it was done better in a single, shorter episode of Love, Death, + Robots titled “Automated Customer Service.”
