Advantageous (2015)

Advantageous has a smart little idea. A woman who has been deemed too old to do her job can replace her body entirely, but it means jeopardizing her relationship with her child. It's a poignant, message-heavy story. Jennifer Phang, however, places this narrative within an entire dystopian world of child sexual exploitation, terrorist attacks, abusive fathers, artificial intelligence, houselessness, surveillance, and memory loss. There is also an additional context of the betrayal of a best friend, a cheating husband, a daughter who refuses to speak with her father, and a religious mother who is also estranged from her daughter. 

To put it another way, the container is too big for the story. 

And what results is boring. 

There are so many nascent ideas in the film, and so little is happening in the narrative itself, that the viewer begins following these other ideas in order to make the film have meaning. But literally all of these ideas are red herrings in Advantageous, and the movie turns out to be what you thought it was about all along. 

Furthermore, it hasn't a thing to do with the poster – which makes this film look like a science fiction thriller – and, in fact, it doesn't need to take place within its dystopian universe at all. All of that is just a distraction from this film's lessons for you. 

Maybe this worked as a short film.

If you want to catch Advantageous you can find it on Netflix. But I wouldn't recommend that.