A teenage boy lives two lives, as everyone does in the world of this film: the real and the virtual. In the real, he goes on vacation to his would-be girlfriend's family reunion, where he is forced to pretend to be the girl's actual boyfriend. While navigating the tricky situation there, in the virtual world he's tricked into releasing a malicious A.I. that starts to consume the accounts of a good chunk of the world population. The virtual world, called OZ, has a lot of influence on how the real world runs, and the A.I. begins destroying the real world from the inside out. This film isn't bad, but it's a little too vague to work. The characters are all paper-thin and the rules of its universe are ill-defined. It's also ugly to look at. The animation is too choppy and cheap-looking. The virtual world is a little more interesting than the real world, but it's nothing too special to look at, either. Worth checking out, but it's far below the director's earlier work, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
Review of Summer Wars
