Not too many comedies begin off with a lady shedding her husband and son in a horrific aircraft crash. However then not many additionally characteristic cute speaking robots, Yakuza assassins and black-market sex-bot manuals. No matter Sunny seems to be like, it’s not. A present about grief dressed up as an ironic sci-fi thriller, and a zany Kawaī comedy that isn’t afraid of occasional graphic homicide, A24 and Apple TV+’s newest effort feels prefer it was made to fuck along with your algorithm – and it’s one of many oddest highlights of the summer time.
Take it at face worth and Sunny is each sappy pet film that’s ever been made: Rashida Jones is Suzie, an American dwelling in Kyoto, Japan, who spirals after shedding her household earlier than begrudgingly getting a “home robotic” referred to as Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura) that finally begins cheering her up. Sunny is relentlessly upbeat, and Suzie’s drunken matches of distress begin to get shorter as she retains waking as much as see Sunny smiling away, cleansing up all her empties.
That most likely would have been sufficient for a half-decent present (Jones nails a humorous/unhappy efficiency right here that will have lifted even the shallowest tackle the identical story), however Sunny has greater plans. Firstly, we’re not too certain whether or not or not Suzie’s husband is even lifeless. A name to his telephone that doesn’t go to voicemail is the primary trace that Masa (Drive My Automotive’s Hidetoshi Nishijima) may not be who we thought he was – adopted by a path of different clues that leads Suzie and Sunny right into a plot stuffed with underground robotic fights, gang murders, company conspiracies and darkish net hackers. There’s a baddie with a removable finger (confusingly referred to as ‘You’), an annoying and presumably lethal mother-in-law (Judy Ongg) and a plucky bartender who appears to be serving to out of sheer boredom (a star-making flip from comic and singer annie the clumsy).
There’s a contact of latest reveals like Severance and Maniac to the look and tone of Sunny’s future-set Japanese underworld, however it by no means veers too far into sci-fi to make it simple to label. Sunny’s personal design (and that of the opposite robots that often roll into the background behind all of the mad mystery-solving) feels real, and Sotomura lends the bot sufficient humanity to make you neglect it’s not actual. And, actually, the longer the present goes on, the much less any of the sci-fi stuff even issues – with different strands way more eccentric than a little bit of informal robot-bonding.
Jones, as ever, is the right lead to assist tie all of the lose threads round one thing grounded and heartfelt, giving the form of sharp deadpan efficiency the collection must maintain it from coming aside on the seams. Sunny is precisely the kind of present that very simply may have grow to be a whole mess – throwing every part on the wall and seeing what sticks, undercutting all of the heavy feelings with goofy robotic jokes and all the time feeling unbalanced in the very best approach. Exhibits this bold, bizarre and humorous need to be caught with.
‘Sunny’ is streaming on Apple TV+ from July 10
