At The Movies: Say yes to fiendish techno-parable Companion, wedding comedy You’re Cordially Invited

Companion (M18)

97 minutes, now showing
★★★★☆

The story: Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) arrive at a luxurious lakeside lodge for a weekend with his quartet of 30-something pals, including his ex (Megan Suri), the Russian billionaire host (Rupert Friend) and a gay couple (Harvey Guillen and Lukas Gage). Not everyone will leave alive.

Iris is docile and devoted – because she is Josh’s sexbot companion, a piece of hardware ordered online and customised to satisfy him.

Companion is a Hollywood original best enjoyed cold, but the big reveal is in the trailers and may come as a shock only to Iris, who thinks she is human despite her cat-eye make-up never smearing even in the shower.

There are many more twisty surprises in this fiendish near-future thriller, where a murder 20 minutes in leads to a chase through the woods with US$12 million (S$16 million) at stake.

American writer-director Drew Hancock’s feature debut is too sneaky to join the trending ethical discourse on virtual companionships, and is quite a subversion of techno-phobic cautionary tales.

It is a darkly hilarious, outrageously entertaining satire on the abusive relationships of entitled misogynists like Josh, who uses and manipulates his women. He shuts Iris down with a voice command, and her 40 per cent intelligence setting is especially demeaning.

No dummy, she evolves from self-discovery to a bloody fight for self-determination after gaining control of his mobile app.

The android is the most empathetic character in a punchy ensemble, and American actress Thatcher from the survivalist series Yellowjackets (2021 to present) and the Hugh Grant horror Heretic (2024) is thrilling in the voltaic rage of Iris’ #MeToo revenge.

Hot take: There is nothing artificial about the intelligence of this incisively fun techno-parable.

You’re Cordially Invited

111 minutes, available on Prime Video
★★★☆☆

The story: Slapstick disasters ensue when a wedding venue on an idyllic island is accidentally double-booked for the same weekend.

You’re Cordially Invited has Hollywood stars Will Ferrell play the goofy protective widower father of one bride (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Reese Witherspoon the control freak sister of the other (Meredith Hagner).

The rival organisers’ initial arrangements to share the tiny resort quickly devolve into a petty all-out war of gamesmanship and sabotage, climaxing in the dock’s collapse during the sunset exchange of vows.

This matrimonial farce is part Father Of The Bride (1950), part Bride Wars (2009), plus Ferrell wrestling an alligator. It is broad and chaotic until its slushy messages about family bonding, falling in love and letting go, but it has big names for a straight-to-streaming trifle designed for nothing more than undemanding home viewing.

The two leads, both leaning into type, are beloved pros with the practised comic timing to pull off the hijinks under American writer-director Nicholas Stoller of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) and Neighbors (2014).

Even so, Celia Weston is the scene stealer as Witherspoon’s acerbic Southern Belle matriarch. Deadpanning comedians Rory Scovel and Leanne Morgan, too, are good value as her estranged siblings.

American boy band idol Nick Jonas is the swoonsome singing pastor in a cameo. And, because a party overcrowded with mismatched screwballs can never be a dull one, male strippers, dancing zebras, tipsy bridesmaids and a multicultural deejay crew are also cordially invited to – or simply gatecrash – the pratfalls.

Hot take: RSVP yes to a round of silly laughs.