Bigbug
Entry updated 21 September 2026. Tagged: Film.
French film (2022). Eskwad, Gaumont, Netflix. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Written by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurent. Cast includes Stéphane De Groodt, Youssef Hadji, François Levantal, Isabelle Nanty, Claude Perron and Elsa Zylberstein. 111 minutes. Colour.
In 2045, humanity has become ever more reliant on household Robots for menial tasks and housework. Entertainment is provided by Yonyx Androids mocking and humiliating humans on television. In this world Alice (Zylberstein) is a rarity for her interest in crafts and physical books, and her loyalty to her outdated robots, some of whom were childhood companions to her daughter. When there is a Yonyx uprising in the outside world, the robots take over the house, keeping Alice, her family, some neighbours and friends locked inside the house for their safety. The humans are selfishly unaware of this, seeing only robot rebellion, until a Yonyx android arrives and threatens them. Humans and loyal robots team up in a show of ingenuity to defeat the invader, whose stupidity is shown when one of the Yonyx accidentally sends an order to have all its own kind eliminated, and they are destroyed by armed drones.
Bigbug marked Jeunet's first return to sf after the enormous international success of Amelie (2001), but unlike that film and earlier works such as Delicatessen (1990) and The City of Lost Children (1995) it lacks a credible human element to offset his obsession with art direction and inventive design. For a director who has bluntly stated "I hate messages", an obvious, farcical anti-AI satire is perhaps a strange choice of project, but the very broad Humour and stereotyped characters mean it is lacking in nuance beyond a message that AI and robots are too stupid ever to take over from humans. Beyond the movie homages, especially to Blade Runner (1982), and a few memorable touches like a robot modelled on Einstein (see Icons), it is perhaps most notable as one of Cinema's first clear products of the Covid Pandemic era: for all its surface brightness, the film is almost all claustrophobically set in one location, and the fear that humans will become too accustomed to isolation and reliant on Technology is one of the targets of the comedy. The cast members enter into it gamely, but the film was released to little fanfare on Netflix and is likely to remain a minor item in Jeunet's filmography. [CWa]
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