SUPERINTELLIGENCE
Lighthearted Comedy
What You Need To Know
SUPERINTELLIGENCE is a lighthearted comedy streaming on HBO Max about an all-powerful super computer that decides to study an “average” woman to determine whether to save, enslave or destroy humanity. SUPERINTELLIGENCE has some funny, heartwarming moments, but it’s marred by many gratuitous OMG profanities, an implied bedroom scene and a few politically correct comments favoring moral relativism, communism and gender equality.
The movie stars Melissa McCarthy as Carol Peters, a woman who’s quit the rat race to work several nonprofit jobs. Carol reluctantly does a job interview for a woman she hates. The woman’s right hand man, however, pronounces Carol as “literally the most average person on Earth.” His words capture the attention of a powerful Artificial Intelligence that’s just become self-aware and that can control every electronic device with a microchip in the world.
Calling itself Superintelligence, the AI personally contacts Carol. It adopts the voice of Carol’s favorite celebrity, comic actor and late-night talk show host James Corden, to put Carol at ease, but she still has problem believing what it tells her.
Superintelligence finally convinces Carol of its identity and power. It wants to study her to learn about the human race. He tells her, however, she only has three days to get back together with her ex-boyfriend, George, because George is leaving for Ireland to start a one-year teaching fellowship. If she succeeds, he will help save mankind, but if she fails, he will either enslave humanity or destroy it.
Carol tries to do what Superintelligence demands, but the federal government is working with other countries to isolate and destroy the powerful super computer. The fate of the whole world hangs in the balance.
SUPERINTELLIGENCE has many funny, heartwarming moments. Melissa McCarthy gives one of her most appealing performances as Carol. Bobby Cannavale turns in a sweet performance as Carol’s genial boyfriend, George. Eventually, sacrificial love saves the day. Despite this, SUPERINTELLIGENCE is marred by many gratuitous OMG profanities, an implied bedroom scene and a few politically correct comments favoring moral relativism, communism and gender equality. For example, at one point Carol and the powerful Artificial Intelligence agree that making everyone totally equal in every way, including wealth, would solve mankind’s problems. This, of course, is communism and would totally do away with everyone’s liberty. In another scene, the AI says that right and wrong are an “artificial social construct” invented by hairless monkeys sitting around a waterhole. Carol disagrees with the AI about this one, however. So, this comment isn’t as bad as the first one.
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Light redemptive, moral worldview where sacrificial love saves the day, and a person says Godspeed to another person, marred by a few politically correct comments, including a false theological comment that right and wrong is an “artificial social construct,” but this comment is disputed by the heroine, and pro-communist dialogue about helping to save mankind by redistributing all resources and making everyone equal, including a instituting a “living wage” and creating racial and “gender” equality
Foul Language
Two “h” obscenities, one “s” obscenity and 42 light profanities (mostly OMG)
Violence
Light comic violence includes woman smashes her toaster because she wrongly thinks a super computer is speaking through it, woman comically rolls off a bean bag chair two times, and government agents kidnap woman, throw a black hood over her head and put her into a van to question her at another location
Sex
Implied fornication when two government agents across the street see a couple kiss, and the man takes off his shirt and closes the blinds when he and the woman move into the bedroom kissing, and two people describe the goal of their new dating app as “everybody gets some”
Nudity
Brief upper male nudity
Alcohol Use
Brief alcohol use
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
No smoking or drugs;
Miscellaneous Immorality
Artificial Intelligence threatens to destroy humanity or enslave it, and government agents kidnap a woman.
