June 30, 2023 • 11 mins
If you, like me, missed M3gan in theaters and were curious what all the fuss was about, M3gan is now available on Amazon Prime. I checked it out and was very impressed, M3gan in its own way is part of the recent wave of theatrically successful horror (Smile, Barbarian) that hopefully will trigger a renaissance of original films getting made. Did you see M3gan? What did you think?
Trying to figure out, "What should I stream tonight?" Come back to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for the best Film and TV recommendations for what to watch on streaming platforms. Please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts if you're enjoying the show, and mention a movie or TV show you want me to cover (and I will). Subscribe for future episodes.
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Watch This Tonight is a movie recommendation podcast and TV recommendation podcast, produced by Voyage Media. You can find other Voyage Media podcasts at voyagemedia.fm
Thanks for listening.
Trying to figure out, "What should I stream tonight?" Come back to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for the best Film and TV recommendations for what to watch on streaming platforms. Please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts if you're enjoying the show, and mention a movie or TV show you want me to cover (and I will). Subscribe for future episodes.
Reach out to us @BenamorDan (Twitter), watch_this_tonight (Instagram) or @watchthistonightpodcast (TikTok).
Watch This Tonight is a movie recommendation podcast and TV recommendation podcast, produced by Voyage Media. You can find other Voyage Media podcasts at voyagemedia.fm
Thanks for listening.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.
(00:22):
I'm a producer, writer of filmand television and now a podcast producer.
And despite having every streaming service,I never know what to watch. So
anytime I watch something good, Italk about it on the show. This
way, you'll never have the sameproblem I do. I watched this tonight.
There's always something good to watch.Let's get started. Today. In
the show, we were talking aboutMegan, obviously a massive hit theatrically.
(00:44):
It is now streaming on Amazon Prime. So if you missed it in theaters
like me, and maybe thought,you know, it was just gimmicky and
kind of silly, there was thisviral clip of the Meghan doll dancing that
was on TikTok for a while andyou thought, yeah, you know,
it seems kind of like slight andyou weren't sure about watching it. It's
really good, it's really fun,it's very well made. It's totally worth
(01:07):
watching. I think I definitely hadthe wrong impression of it as being more
slight than it is, and alsoit has a bit more teeth to it
than I anticipated, so I wouldsay that it's even better than I expected.
I mean, obviously I knew itwas very successful, but I just
wasn't sure. You know, we'veseen kind of killer doll the movies before,
(01:29):
so I wasn't sure if it wouldbe something that would really be my
cup of tea. But I sawher name was on Prime. I watched
it. I thought it was good. I think it's worth watching. And
I'll discuss why this is an almostspoiler free episode. There's a couple of
things at the end that I'll warnyou about, but other than that,
it's you can listen to this andit won't affect your reviewing of the film.
(01:49):
So Alison Williams has carved out thisniche where she plays these really uniquely
unlikable characters. If you think abouther character and Girls, and her character
get Out, and then her characterin this movie, they're they're all,
you know. The character and Girlsespecially was like it's a very unique thing.
Usually you're either the villain or you'rethe hero mostly speaking, and in
(02:15):
all of these parts, well,i mean get Out, she's no spoilers,
but yeah, it's you know,uh in Girls in this movie,
it's like there's a there's a pricklinessto the character that is unusual. So
in this story, the essential premiseof the story really is that Alison Williams
is a designer of toys that youknow, are use ai and interact with
(02:36):
children, and her niece is orphaned, and to get out of having to
like actually interact with her niece,she basically builds this robot girl that essentially
becomes like a parent to the littlegirl she's supposed to be watching. So
that's already kind of interesting, andyou know, it's it paints her not
(02:58):
necessarily the most flattering light. Andthen she has a neighbor who the dog
keeps bothering her, and she straightout tells the neighbor, I'm gonna get
your dog put down or something thateffect. Like She's like, if you
don't put your dog down, Iwill, which is a pretty bold thing
to have the main character of yourmovie say to somebody. Obviously, you
know, you have to know thatthe majority of the audience is going to
(03:21):
go out on that person as soonas they say that. So I really
like that about the movie. Iliked that it made her very imperfect and
flawed, and it kind of redeemsareas it goes along, but it definitely
has like a mean satiric edge,which I think you kind of need.
I think if they had played thisone hundred percent straight, I don't know
that it would have worked. SoI liked that part of it a lot.
(03:44):
We do have a category on theshow, something stupid that probably only
bothered me. I'm willing to betthis didn't bother percent of the audience.
But the way that it's filmed,and it might just be a question of
you know, maybe there's a framethat I blinked and missed or something,
but I could have sworn. Theway they filmed it, it made it
seem like Alison Williams wrote the codefor this doll. That is incredible.
(04:08):
That is so intelligent it can adaptto any possible stimulus by like pulling like
one all nighter. That's kind ofthe way it seemed. Now later in
the story, there's some line aboutremember how long it took. I think
Megan says, remember how long ittook to get my operating system to where
it is now. We used tostay up until four am talking about Jane
Austin, and I was like,did they like that? Did I miss
(04:30):
that? It almost felt like therewas like, was that a line added
later or something. That was theone part that kind of bugged me.
But again it's sort of it's quipped. It's a small quibble. I have
to say. I think the creepiestpart of the whole movie is that Megan
sings Rihanna's Titanium to help the littlegirls Katie go to sleep, which is
(04:51):
incredibly creepy, and that worked reallywell. I mean, it's a very
modern movie, right, It hasa very modern accessibility to it. I
think the success the film is verymuch attributable to the modern era. You
know. I think if that clipof Megan dancing had not gone viral,
maybe the movie would not have beenas successful as it was. It might
(05:12):
have been more of like a cultclassic kind of thing. It's not a
new concept. Like I said,we've seen we have seen, you know,
killer doll movies before. That hasbeen done before. But it shows
you that, you know, tomake a good movie, you don't have
to have this like staggeringly like noone has ever done this before. It's
more like can you find a wrinkleon something on a classic kind of template
(05:36):
and really well executed. And that'swhat this movie is. It's it's it's
a wrinkle on a template. Butit's done extremely well. It's very well
executed. It's fun, it's funny. So it just it's they did a
great job of executing this. It'swell directed, it's well acted, it's
well scripted. It's just a funmovie. It's also not too long.
(05:57):
It's about an hour and forty minutes, which I love. I'll give me
a movie that's like hour and ahalf hour forty minutes that doesn't overstate it's
welcome. You know, you're inand you're out and you have satisfying experience.
I don't know. I think weas time has marched on for some
reason. Anytime they have an eventmovie, now it's got to be like
two and a half hours, threehours, Like why you know, some
(06:20):
stories are meant to be movies,they're not meant to be you know,
essentially like a limited series in afilm. And I just really appreciated how
economical it was. And it's justI think perfectly timed, and I want
to give them a credit that itdoes have this It is sort of about
something, right. This is theultimate don't give your kids the iPad movie.
(06:42):
It's basically, as a parent,is extremely tempting to just park your
kid in front of a screen andbe like, all right, peace man
and Megan is the ultimate expression ofthat. If this actually existed, people
absolutely would use it and abuse it, and you know, just be like,
all right, you know, Megan'sgot the suthing control all I'm gonna
have a margarita. So it does. It's not just sort of like a
(07:05):
high concept gimmick. I think thereis something underneath it that connects to real
life stuff that you know, there'sjust enough of that to give it some
substance in addition to sort of thehorror and genre thrills. It's also great
that the movie makes you suspicious ofother electronics, like it's almost like the
Alexa of the house and Megan atsome point or like working together against Allison
(07:28):
Williams. I really like the casting. I think Ronnie Chang as the boss
is great and he should be inmore movies. He's really fun. The
design of the doll also is reallysmart, Like I'm sure they must have
gone through a lot of different variationsof what the doll would look like,
because it's it's so creepy that it'sa doll to be a friend to Little
(07:49):
Girls. But the doll itself doeslook more I guess older, for lack
of a better word, even thoughit's a small doll, and it's just
it's eerie. It's unsettling. Theway that the doll looks make you makes
you uncomfortable in a good way.I think they smartly designed it so you
kind of can't tell exactly what agethe doll is supposed to be, and
(08:11):
you know the way the eyes areand just the design of the face,
the whole the whole thing about howthat doll is designed, how it moves,
It's all done very cleverly. Thisis a good movie I think,
to look at if you are ascreenwriter, if you're somebody who you know
is producing films. It just asan example of like this is always going
to work if you can figure outa movie that is really I mean,
(08:33):
this is very contained. It's basicallywe're at the lab, we're at Alison
Williams house, we're in some cars. That's pretty much it. And it's
such a high concept premise that youdon't the contain nature of it is never
noticeable. You never feel like it'sartificially contained. If you can come up
with a concept like this that's simple, clean, high concept contained. You
(08:54):
know, it's like, especially inhorror, I think that's always going to
work. So this is a greatexample of you know, horror has had
a really good last couple of years, and it's kind of like the great
hope for cinema frankly, because thecontinuing success of original ideas and horror gives
hope that the business will start embracingthose more in general. You know,
Barbarian smile, Megan. The factthat all of these movies were successful,
(09:20):
theatrically significantly. I mean, Megan'sa massive hit like this I think is
one of the more profitable movies ofthe year it came out, they did
some sort of analysis of its costsand marketing versus the box office gross,
and it was significantly profitable. Sothe success of these movies I think bodes
well for the future of cinema.A little tiny spoilery thing here, So
(09:41):
if you haven't seen Megan, Iguess to take off. So here's a
little a little bit like a minuteof spoilers. When they kill Ronnie Chang
at the of this movie. Everythingit's such a they've done such a good
job of building up the narrative whereit's all about the company and working for
the company and they're going to launchthe Megan and this that and the pressure
from the boss, and then hejust gets knifed basically, and you sort
(10:05):
of know as the audience, you'relike, oh, well, now we've
entered a different part of the story, right. It's an escalation from which
there can be no return, Andso I thought that worked so well.
It kind of kicks off the thirdact and then it just goes bananas.
And I thought that from a pacingperspective, it's just a very smart choice
(10:26):
because it was like the world wasa certain way and had sort of certain
almost safety rails, and as soonas they killed Ronnie Jang, there's no
more safety rails. So I thoughtthat worked really well. Also, So
that is Megan. That's a showfor a day. I'd love to know
what you think. Did you seeMegan in theaters? Are you now going
to catch it on streaming? Wouldyou think about it? Let me know.
(10:46):
You can always reach out to meat Bennimore down on Twitter, Watch
This Tonight on Instagram, watch ThisTonight podcast on TikTok, or you can
do on our Facebook group. Ihave something exciting in the works, as
I have and before, I amafraid to tell you because I don't want
to drink it. If it doesend up happening, you know, you'll
know immediately and I will shout itfrom the rooftops. So I'll just leave
(11:11):
dad in the air, and asalways, thank you so much for listening.
If you like the show. Thebiggest solid you can do, you
know, is to just write areview an Apple podcast. That is the
most helpful thing you can do forthe show. Until next time, Bye bye,
Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.
(00:22):
I'm a producer, writer of filmand television and now a podcast producer.
And despite having every streaming service,I never know what to watch. So
anytime I watch something good, Italk about it on the show. This
way, you'll never have the sameproblem I do. I watched this tonight.
There's always something good to watch.Let's get started. Today. In
the show, we were talking aboutMegan, obviously a massive hit theatrically.
(00:44):
It is now streaming on Amazon Prime. So if you missed it in theaters
like me, and maybe thought,you know, it was just gimmicky and
kind of silly, there was thisviral clip of the Meghan doll dancing that
was on TikTok for a while andyou thought, yeah, you know,
it seems kind of like slight andyou weren't sure about watching it. It's
really good, it's really fun,it's very well made. It's totally worth
(01:07):
watching. I think I definitely hadthe wrong impression of it as being more
slight than it is, and alsoit has a bit more teeth to it
than I anticipated, so I wouldsay that it's even better than I expected.
I mean, obviously I knew itwas very successful, but I just
wasn't sure. You know, we'veseen kind of killer doll the movies before,
(01:29):
so I wasn't sure if it wouldbe something that would really be my
cup of tea. But I sawher name was on Prime. I watched
it. I thought it was good. I think it's worth watching. And
I'll discuss why this is an almostspoiler free episode. There's a couple of
things at the end that I'll warnyou about, but other than that,
it's you can listen to this andit won't affect your reviewing of the film.
(01:49):
So Alison Williams has carved out thisniche where she plays these really uniquely
unlikable characters. If you think abouther character and Girls, and her character
get Out, and then her characterin this movie, they're they're all,
you know. The character and Girlsespecially was like it's a very unique thing.
Usually you're either the villain or you'rethe hero mostly speaking, and in
(02:15):
all of these parts, well,i mean get Out, she's no spoilers,
but yeah, it's you know,uh in Girls in this movie,
it's like there's a there's a pricklinessto the character that is unusual. So
in this story, the essential premiseof the story really is that Alison Williams
is a designer of toys that youknow, are use ai and interact with
(02:36):
children, and her niece is orphaned, and to get out of having to
like actually interact with her niece,she basically builds this robot girl that essentially
becomes like a parent to the littlegirl she's supposed to be watching. So
that's already kind of interesting, andyou know, it's it paints her not
(02:58):
necessarily the most flattering light. Andthen she has a neighbor who the dog
keeps bothering her, and she straightout tells the neighbor, I'm gonna get
your dog put down or something thateffect. Like She's like, if you
don't put your dog down, Iwill, which is a pretty bold thing
to have the main character of yourmovie say to somebody. Obviously, you
know, you have to know thatthe majority of the audience is going to
(03:21):
go out on that person as soonas they say that. So I really
like that about the movie. Iliked that it made her very imperfect and
flawed, and it kind of redeemsareas it goes along, but it definitely
has like a mean satiric edge,which I think you kind of need.
I think if they had played thisone hundred percent straight, I don't know
that it would have worked. SoI liked that part of it a lot.
(03:44):
We do have a category on theshow, something stupid that probably only
bothered me. I'm willing to betthis didn't bother percent of the audience.
But the way that it's filmed,and it might just be a question of
you know, maybe there's a framethat I blinked and missed or something,
but I could have sworn. Theway they filmed it, it made it
seem like Alison Williams wrote the codefor this doll. That is incredible.
(04:08):
That is so intelligent it can adaptto any possible stimulus by like pulling like
one all nighter. That's kind ofthe way it seemed. Now later in
the story, there's some line aboutremember how long it took. I think
Megan says, remember how long ittook to get my operating system to where
it is now. We used tostay up until four am talking about Jane
Austin, and I was like,did they like that? Did I miss
(04:30):
that? It almost felt like therewas like, was that a line added
later or something. That was theone part that kind of bugged me.
But again it's sort of it's quipped. It's a small quibble. I have
to say. I think the creepiestpart of the whole movie is that Megan
sings Rihanna's Titanium to help the littlegirls Katie go to sleep, which is
(04:51):
incredibly creepy, and that worked reallywell. I mean, it's a very
modern movie, right, It hasa very modern accessibility to it. I
think the success the film is verymuch attributable to the modern era. You
know. I think if that clipof Megan dancing had not gone viral,
maybe the movie would not have beenas successful as it was. It might
(05:12):
have been more of like a cultclassic kind of thing. It's not a
new concept. Like I said,we've seen we have seen, you know,
killer doll movies before. That hasbeen done before. But it shows
you that, you know, tomake a good movie, you don't have
to have this like staggeringly like noone has ever done this before. It's
more like can you find a wrinkleon something on a classic kind of template
(05:36):
and really well executed. And that'swhat this movie is. It's it's it's
a wrinkle on a template. Butit's done extremely well. It's very well
executed. It's fun, it's funny. So it just it's they did a
great job of executing this. It'swell directed, it's well acted, it's
well scripted. It's just a funmovie. It's also not too long.
(05:57):
It's about an hour and forty minutes, which I love. I'll give me
a movie that's like hour and ahalf hour forty minutes that doesn't overstate it's
welcome. You know, you're inand you're out and you have satisfying experience.
I don't know. I think weas time has marched on for some
reason. Anytime they have an eventmovie, now it's got to be like
two and a half hours, threehours, Like why you know, some
(06:20):
stories are meant to be movies,they're not meant to be you know,
essentially like a limited series in afilm. And I just really appreciated how
economical it was. And it's justI think perfectly timed, and I want
to give them a credit that itdoes have this It is sort of about
something, right. This is theultimate don't give your kids the iPad movie.
(06:42):
It's basically, as a parent,is extremely tempting to just park your
kid in front of a screen andbe like, all right, peace man
and Megan is the ultimate expression ofthat. If this actually existed, people
absolutely would use it and abuse it, and you know, just be like,
all right, you know, Megan'sgot the suthing control all I'm gonna
have a margarita. So it does. It's not just sort of like a
(07:05):
high concept gimmick. I think thereis something underneath it that connects to real
life stuff that you know, there'sjust enough of that to give it some
substance in addition to sort of thehorror and genre thrills. It's also great
that the movie makes you suspicious ofother electronics, like it's almost like the
Alexa of the house and Megan atsome point or like working together against Allison
(07:28):
Williams. I really like the casting. I think Ronnie Chang as the boss
is great and he should be inmore movies. He's really fun. The
design of the doll also is reallysmart, Like I'm sure they must have
gone through a lot of different variationsof what the doll would look like,
because it's it's so creepy that it'sa doll to be a friend to Little
(07:49):
Girls. But the doll itself doeslook more I guess older, for lack
of a better word, even thoughit's a small doll, and it's just
it's eerie. It's unsettling. Theway that the doll looks make you makes
you uncomfortable in a good way.I think they smartly designed it so you
kind of can't tell exactly what agethe doll is supposed to be, and
(08:11):
you know the way the eyes areand just the design of the face,
the whole the whole thing about howthat doll is designed, how it moves,
It's all done very cleverly. Thisis a good movie I think,
to look at if you are ascreenwriter, if you're somebody who you know
is producing films. It just asan example of like this is always going
to work if you can figure outa movie that is really I mean,
(08:33):
this is very contained. It's basicallywe're at the lab, we're at Alison
Williams house, we're in some cars. That's pretty much it. And it's
such a high concept premise that youdon't the contain nature of it is never
noticeable. You never feel like it'sartificially contained. If you can come up
with a concept like this that's simple, clean, high concept contained. You
(08:54):
know, it's like, especially inhorror, I think that's always going to
work. So this is a greatexample of you know, horror has had
a really good last couple of years, and it's kind of like the great
hope for cinema frankly, because thecontinuing success of original ideas and horror gives
hope that the business will start embracingthose more in general. You know,
Barbarian smile, Megan. The factthat all of these movies were successful,
(09:20):
theatrically significantly. I mean, Megan'sa massive hit like this I think is
one of the more profitable movies ofthe year it came out, they did
some sort of analysis of its costsand marketing versus the box office gross,
and it was significantly profitable. Sothe success of these movies I think bodes
well for the future of cinema.A little tiny spoilery thing here, So
(09:41):
if you haven't seen Megan, Iguess to take off. So here's a
little a little bit like a minuteof spoilers. When they kill Ronnie Chang
at the of this movie. Everythingit's such a they've done such a good
job of building up the narrative whereit's all about the company and working for
the company and they're going to launchthe Megan and this that and the pressure
from the boss, and then hejust gets knifed basically, and you sort
(10:05):
of know as the audience, you'relike, oh, well, now we've
entered a different part of the story, right. It's an escalation from which
there can be no return, Andso I thought that worked so well.
It kind of kicks off the thirdact and then it just goes bananas.
And I thought that from a pacingperspective, it's just a very smart choice
(10:26):
because it was like the world wasa certain way and had sort of certain
almost safety rails, and as soonas they killed Ronnie Jang, there's no
more safety rails. So I thoughtthat worked really well. Also, So
that is Megan. That's a showfor a day. I'd love to know
what you think. Did you seeMegan in theaters? Are you now going
to catch it on streaming? Wouldyou think about it? Let me know.
(10:46):
You can always reach out to meat Bennimore down on Twitter, Watch
This Tonight on Instagram, watch ThisTonight podcast on TikTok, or you can
do on our Facebook group. Ihave something exciting in the works, as
I have and before, I amafraid to tell you because I don't want
to drink it. If it doesend up happening, you know, you'll
know immediately and I will shout itfrom the rooftops. So I'll just leave
(11:11):
dad in the air, and asalways, thank you so much for listening.
If you like the show. Thebiggest solid you can do, you
know, is to just write areview an Apple podcast. That is the
most helpful thing you can do forthe show. Until next time, Bye bye,
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