Review of Natural City (2003) by Federico M — 13 Mar 2009

I would not watch Natural City more than once and having watched it once I believe it is my duty to strongly discourage anyone else before they waste 1hr and 52 minutes of their dvd player's operating lifespan, you will get more fun from spinning this dvd on your pinky.

But let me start with what does work. Natural City's premise and atmosphere are pretty good. The premise and atmosphere are basically Blade Runner (unlike Natural City, a film that gets better with every viewing), all those futuristic skylines with a twist: A renegade replicant, and the cop who hunts him down, only the renegade android has the implanted brain of the cop's best friend, an aging scientist with dreams of living forever. The cop goes to this scientist, before the scientist has his brain transferred to the android, to extend the life of Ria, the android girl he loves. Who has only three days left to live.

The scientist tells the cop that the only way he can save Ria is if he transfers her brain to a human girl who is a match for an important part of Ria's DNA required for the brain transplant. Only that transplant would require killing the human girl, who has a unique personality and feelings and pain all of her own.

I know this is all complicated, but the gist of the story is the best part of it, what sucks is everything else about it.

Ria is basically a non-entity. Transplant a cat's brain into the human girl instead of Ria and no one would be the wiser, and I'd be willing to bet you'd fool the cop too.

The human girl's own brain has far more life than Ria's Teddy Ruxpin computer. I mean there are movies that make you believe that their androids are actually living beings, there are also movies which make you believe the androids in them have more of a soul than their human counterparts, but Natural City's androids are just machines with no life to them.

This could be made interesting, for example, if Natural City would go into why the cop loves this lifeless machine, or if it had a scene showing true tenderness between them. You know the quality of a movie is bad when the largest expression of emotion and relationship between the two love leads is when they hold hands, come on--we can all go to a park to watch people hold hands.... this is supposed to be a movie!

Take advantage of the subject matter, have a scene where Ria is jealous that her mind will be transported into a beautiful girls body because she thinks that even though Ria will be together with her love, he will be looking at an exterior that is not her own. I dunno, at least add some intriguing dilemmas to make the movie a movie.

Also the fight sequences are below average, and that wouldn't be a problem if the story was executed more effectively, but in top of being below average they go on for far too long, they should have been edited down and more scenes given to build the cop and Ria's relationship.

And also I think people in movies who know they only have a brief time to live should be a bit more poetic than they are in this film. Instead we have scenes of Ria just looking down at the floor a lot and whining that she has to go home.

For me, Natural City was a disappointment, then why have most people on Flixter given the movie three and half stars? Beats me, but I'd be willing to bet they were spinning the disk on their pinkies.