This week on Diminishing Returns Theatre is M3GAN 2.0 (now streaming on Peacock), the sequel to raucous and hilarious 2023 surprise hit M3GAN, which was the touching story of an artificially intelligent ’tween doll who could dance and murder with equal aplomb. Fueled by an onslaught of viral-marketing memes, the first film grossed a tidy $182 million, but the follow-up notched less than a quarter of that, earning $39 million. So, as the guy once said, wha’ hap’n’d? Well, returning writer/director Gerald Johnstone’s genre shift from horror-comedy to sci-fi-spy caper was likely ill-advised, because interest in the sequel seemed to wane quickly when people realized there was going to be fewer nasty kills and more fast-typing on computer keyboards. The core cast, led by Allison Williams, returns to explain a whole lotta crap like they’re in an extra-half-assed Mission: Impossible movie, and all we can do is sit here and stifle yawns.

The Gist: SOMEWHERE ON THE TURKISH-IRANIAN BORDER is where this movie begins. Okey doke! It’s where an AI soldier dubbed AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno, Ahsoka) loses control and goes rogue, punching a guy’s head clean off – in PG-13 silhouette, boo hiss. Turns out she’s self-aware, which doesn’t sit well with the American military honchos who used the M3GAN tech to design her to be a mean as hell cold-blooded political assassin. Sounds like a problem. Meanwhile, we catch up with M3GAN’s creator, Gemma (Williams), who’s about-faced on her development of AI tech and is now writing books and traversing the speaking circuit to promote the dangers of AI: “You wouldn’t give your child cocaine, so why would you give them a smartphone?” She’s still legal guardian of her now-teen niece Cady (Violet McGraw), whose interests shifted to martial arts in the wake of the violent events of M3GAN, and nurses an obsession with Steven Seagal movies that’s almost preferable to cocaine. Almost.

One of Gemma’s gigs involves developing an exoskeleton to enhance human strength instead of replacing humans with robots that might go off the rails and get all killy and shit, like M3GAN did. Her work draws in the requisite villain of every other movie that exists in this era, the billionaire tech cretin. He’s Alton Appleton (Jemaine Clement), who’s developing an AI neurochip that attaches to your temple. He wants to hire Gemma, but he’s more repellent than skunk-butt juice in concentrated form, so she turns him down. Then she goes home to the house that’s the subject of multiple self-aware jokes about how she can afford it, because that’s a Movie Thing, you know, how can Sydney Sweeney’s character pay for 2,000 square feet in Manhattan when she’s a barista, or whatever. Gemma’s smart home tech is still intact for some reason, and that reason is, so M3GAN (voice of Jenna Davis, physical performance by Amie Donald) can reveal she was hiding in it all along. And the only reason Gemma doesn’t pull the plug is, she’s learned that AMELIA is on the loose, and maybe M3GAN can help – if the formerly malevolent girlbot can be trusted, of course.

Thus begins an utterly garbs plot that’s so convoluted, it goes up its own bung about a dozen times. It involves crafting a new body for M3GAN, Gemma’s new cybersecurity-expert boyfriend Christian (Aristotle Athari), two of her coworkers (Jen Van Epps and Brian Jordan Alvarez, reprising their roles from the first film, like we just couldn’t enjoy a sequel without them) and the military jerk (Timm Sharp) who created AMELIA. The new M3GAN not only can dance just as jiggy as before and awkwardly sing a heartfelt ballad to Gemma – because we must repeat the best bits from the first movie instead of coming up with something new – but also kick ass. “All right, meatsacks, let’s go to work,” she says. Okey doke!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Ex Machina meets Mission: Impossible if it was a Happy Madison production? 

Performance Worth Watching: This is a general endorsement of Allison Williams, who in my world will forever be the Froot Loops lady from Get Out. She can’t save M3GAN 2.0, though. She’s only human.

Memorable Dialogue: There are two funny lines in this two-hour bloated sack of garbage:

Gemma: “M3GAN, please don’t take this to the chorus.”

M3GAN, upon revealing that she’s been peeping on Gemma’s, shall we say, self-pollution: “There were times when I wanted to look away, but the sheer pageantry was compelling.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing noteworthy.

Our Take: You have to admire Johnstone’s attempt to genre-hop so M3GAN 2.0 fends off Cynical Sequel Syndrome and doesn’t fall back into samey formula. Conceptually, anyway. In execution, it’s a miscalculation: Half the movie passes before M3GAN truly returns. The pacing is belabored – there’s a lengthy stretch of this movie consisting of three scenes of crushingly dull exposition that feed a plot that’s several times more tortured and labyrinthine than it needs to be. Is it spoofing on similar Mission: Impossible plots? Perhaps. Not sure what else it could be. 

It could also stand to be actually funny, an entertaining spoof that doesn’t feel labored within an inch of its life and has a little zip in its step. The editing is sloppy, and the action sequences lack punch. It rarely makes us feel invested in its characters – Gemma’s sly complexity in the first film is scrubbed down to blandness – who exist for no other reason than to do dopey shit. Johnstone mistakes silliness for comedy, devolving into sub-James Bond crapola, throwing in a Knight Rider reference, building to a glibly tongue-in-cheek Terminatoresque eradicate-the-humans development, etc. None of it sticks. The first M3GAN was lean and mean and crisp in its comic timing; M3GAN 2.0 does an about-face, and is just a dull, flabby mess.  

Our Call: Major disappointment! SKIP IT and hope next year’s spinoff SOULM8TE gets the franchise back on track.

M3GAN 2.0 is currently streaming for Peacock subscribers, but it also can be rented or purchased from a number of VOD platforms.

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You can save a bit by subscribing to one of Peacock’s annual plans, which give you 12 months for the price of 10. These cost either $109.99 with ads or $169.99 without ads.

Peacock Premium Plus is also available to subscribe to via Prime Video with a seven-day free trial that you can’t get by subscribing directly on Peacock.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.