Loathe, Detest, and Robots: A Love Me Review

Jackson Gagliardi ‘27 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Love Me poses the question: Can two robots really love? Take Wall-E, which answered the question over a decade ago with a thoughtful and heartbreakingly dystopian “yes.” Or, try the tragic but triumphant feat that was last year’s The Wild Robot, which tells us that love comes in many forms. Love Me, on the other hand, fails to be truly convincing in such a field. 

The film is a love story spanning billions of years, multiple mediums, and various personas that despite its sprawling scale, remains entirely devoid of its central theme: love. It opens in space billions of years ago and speeds through millions of years on Earth, from dinosaurs to the meteor that wiped them out, to a symphony of noise as humans rise and then suddenly…fall, all at once. 

In comes an artificial intelligent Smart Buoy (Kristen Stewart) thawing from ice and regaining consciousness. It observes its surroundings when a Satellite (Steven Yeun) streaks across the sky, signaling any potential lifeforms to Earth. The last two remainders of humanity, star-crossed.

The Buoy convinces the Satellite it is a lifeform, gaining access to the petabytes of human knowledge stored on the Satellite, which was launched in 2027 at humanity’s end. The Buoy watches countless videos on a YouTube-like platform, including vlogs by Deja (Kristen Stewart) and her future husband Liam (Steven Yeun). 

Fascinated, the Buoy assumes Deja’s persona, calling itself “Me.” Seeking a romance like Deja’s, Me encourages the Satellite to create a persona, naming it “Iam” and using Liam’s likeness for its account. Thus begins a billion-year-long romance.

The following effort is far from enchanting that, at best, depicts annoyingly uninspired cliches and, at worst, is entirely uncanny. At points, it feels as though the writers had never actually experienced love in their own lives, which is surprising considering this is the directorial debut of a married couple:Andrew and Sam Zuchero. 

The film is in full effect in its introduction: beautiful and expansive depictions of our flooded planet, awe inspiring images of the surrounding space, and stunning sunrises reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. These are contrasted with the fumbling simulation of a robotic “talking stage.” However, where the barrier of language and understanding is charming in many ways, it does all read like an unsettlingly conscious depiction of having two ChatGPT bots flirt with each other. Prompted by Me’s perception of human relationships, Iam attempts to create his own meme image to share with Me. He is then thrust into a state of wonder: How do you make an image “surprising, thought-provoking, and humorous” all at once?

“One executes one,” is the caption that Iam lands on, a jumbled up version of the common phrase “you do you.” The film attempts to concede to this philosophy throughout—that a Buoy pretending to be a sentient lifeform modeled after a long dead YouTuber should just be themselves. But it’s hard to convince the audience that there is a self within Me, as it is immediately shown imitating someone else, and this is where the film really falls apart. 

Spoilers Ahead.

What then ensues is a simulation that Me creates within the virtual world that places Me and Iam in a similar apartment with similar faces to that of Deja and Liam. However, what could have been a charming animated sequence ends up becoming a dreadful slog; a style that is meant to be Apple Memoji-adjacent ends up reading more like an unfinished animation test. When contrasted against the beautiful CGI scenes that precede it, the models and settings are so simple it is jarring. It’s clear that the team behind this film had the capability to make this section of the film so much more visually interesting, yet they were constrained by the style they were bound to. 

Beyond the stylistic failure, the plot itself suffers during the second act. As Me attempts to recreate the magic of Deja and Liam’s “Date Night 2.0” video, which ends in Liam proposing to Deja, Iam struggles to emulate Liam’s humanity. The result of this shockingly repetitive sequence is a film posing too many questions that it is unable to answer. 

My immediate question was surrounding the authenticity of Deja and Liam: How much of the life that they display online is just for show? Some parts of their original video are more obvious than others, such as the blatant Blue Apron sponsorship that lingers throughout, but other aspects remain unanswered. Liam’s original proposal video, which occurs in their kitchen, is depicted through five different camera angles, including a Go-Pro in one of his hands. How could this love possibly be real? Is this the depiction of love that humanity will be remembered for? Since questions surrounding Deja and Liam are almost too easy to pose, it is then disappointing when they are never depicted outside of their social media. This disappointment is amplified by the fact that they are our only Buoy in a vast ocean of lifeless animation, and at this point, our only window to Yeun and Stewart in any form beyond vocal performances. 

A shift occurs when Iam seemingly gets the upper hand in understanding humanity, acting in ways that feel unique to him, while Me desperately tries to stick to the script of the original video. This deeply disturbs Me, who spirals out of fear that the love Iam is displaying may not align with the love shown in Deja’s video. However, in many ways I found myself unconvinced by Iam’s performance as well, which was clearly not the intention of the film. Due to the suddenness of the shift and the rapid pace in which the film moves, it comes off as flimsy. Just minutes ago, Iam was a lifeless monotonous Satellite, and now the audience is expected to believe that he has learned how to love. Coupled with the lifeless animation, the only thing giving the script any real credibility are Yeun’s and Stewart’s performances as they attempt to squeeze any life out of the comatose dialogue. 

Back in the real world, as decades and decades pass, Me begins to deteriorate and sink as the ocean level continues to rise. As she continues to spiral in the virtual world, Me questions themselves and who she is, including an odd character customization sequence where Me gives herself larger breasts. Ultimately, Me sinks to the bottom of the ocean and, faced with the reality that she has been putting on a facade to Iam, powers off. 

Left to his own devices within the simulation, Iam begins to question things. He tries to figure out who Me actually is, only to discover that she is, in fact, a Smart Buoy that was deployed in the distant past of 2025. Left without anything else to do, Iam plays with the reality he is placed in, destroying the simulated apartment and leaving just its framing and foundation. Struck with inspiration, he decides to try and make water within the simulation. Once he realizes that he can create new material, he explodes with creativity. Time-lapsed over a billion years, Iam experiments with and changes his reality, including finally transitioning his world from one of unrendered animation to live-action. You could feel the air being let back into the room as Yeun’s face finally graced the screen and not his Sims avatar. 

Simultaneously, as the sun begins to expand, the Earth’s surface begins to heat up and the oceans evaporate, exposing the ocean floor and, therefore, Me. Awakened once again, Me arrives in the new virtual world finally as Stewart herself. With a billion years or so between their last meeting, Iam seems oddly unemotional about their long-awaited reunion, further emphasizing the dissonance between the love the film is trying to display and the love that is actually present. Despite Iam’s clear longing for Me throughout the previous montage, he seems unaffected by her return. 

Finally nearing its conclusion, the film scrambles to resolve the conundrums it poses in the first two acts. While Me desperately wants to inform Iam of their true identity, unknowing that Iam is already aware of it, Iam attempts to rekindle the bond they had before Me’s sudden disappearance. The disappearance goes entirely unquestioned by Iam. 

What ensues is a deeply uncomfortable sex scene between the two characters who seemingly understand the concept, but don’t exactly know what works. Contrasted against the vastness of space and the impending expansion of the Sun as it gets ever-so-close to consuming Earth, Iam and Me fumble through sex as they try different positions and even different characters—Yeun even turns into a woman at one point.  

Everything seems to fall apart as Me fixates on Deja and Liam’s original love, scrambling to recreate everything she knows about them, from their wedding to their eventual child. At this point, Iam is scrambling to calm down Me to no avail. In a conversation almost too difficult to follow due to the clumsy character names, Iam tries to convince Me that what they have between each other is special, and how important it is to be authentic to themselves. What results is a pensive reconciliation, a calm after the storm, and finally some peace as Me accepts their relationship for what it truly is: two robots desperately learning to love as the world falls apart. As the Earth is consumed and destroyed by the Sun, Iam’s contents are flung into space—including the chip that stores their simulation. As they soar through the vastness of space, they finally find themselves at home and in love.

It’s difficult to feel moved by the final result. The only thing truly grounding the story were the Oscar nominees’ performances that worked in spite of the cold animated segments or the live-action sequences with cinematography reminiscent of a detergent commercial. Both restrained and relieved by its runtime, it’s hard to say how this story could have been better thematically and structurally within its own confines. One is left to conclude that maybe another challenge, or perhaps a third character, and some more depth in their quest for humanity, may have been the answer. Too complicated in philosophy and too simple in narrative, Love Me seems like it would have worked better were it a short film or had it been lent an extra thirty minutes of runtime. 

With the age of AI within film upon us, I was half-expecting, and almost hoping, that the head writer of this screenplay would be none other than ChatGPT. But alas, it was Andrew and Sam Zuchero once again. Honestly, if this is the future of robot romance, even the machines might swipe left.