Pop Culture Happy Hour - Companion And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

In the smart, twisty thriller-comedy Companion, three young couples gather at a swanky lake house for the weekend. One of the couples is not like the others – that's because the girlfriend (Sophie Thatcher) turns out to be a companion robot, built to satisfy the boyfriend's (Jack Quaid) every fantasy. Inevitably, things go wrong, which sets off a chain of twists and revelations that comes with a body count.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

In the smart, twisty, and very funny thriller comedy companion, three young couples gather at a swanky lakehouse for the weekend. One of the couples is not like the others. That's because the girlfriend turns out to be a companion robot built to satisfy the boyfriend's every fantasy. You've seen enough movies to know what's coming. Things go wrong, bodies pile up, and the robot will have to fight for her freedom and her life.

I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about companion on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday, Aisha Roscoe. Hey, welcome back, Aisha. Hey, glad to be here. Glad to have you. Let's kick it off.

In Companion, Sophie Thatcher, plays Iris, a robot program to love her boyfriend Josh, played by Jack Quaid. The couple goes to a lake house along with their friends, including a gay couple, played by Harvey Guienne and Lucas Gage. Iris is anxious about fitting in with the group. I just don't want to screw everything up. Be poop, you're not going to screw everything up. Just relax.

You know, don't be all moopy and weird. Just remember to, remember to smile and act happy. But on the first night, everything seems fine. The next morning, however, something goes very wrong, which sets off a chain of twists and revelations that comes with a body count. Companion is in theaters now. Aisha kick us up, what do you think? You know, I saw the trailer for this, and I was like,

I think I've seen this before. I don't know about this one. When I actually watched a movie, I was drawn in. Okay? I was watching it while I was at work, because this is part of my job. And when they were calling me to do other stuff, I was like, wait a minute.

I don't, you know, I'm trying to watch this. I didn't want to stop. You know, what I felt like, it subverted some of the tropes that you expect, right? Like, everybody has kind of seen these sorts of movies. And so you have a certain idea of the plot points, But I think this movie understands that and then kind of addresses those and does some surprising things with it. So it's not just like the movie that you have seen over and over again with the beautiful sex bot that like becomes a fin fatal, you know?

Like we've seen that movie. This is not that. And it's really funny. And the characters I find are engaging. You're interested in them and their fate. I thought it was done very well. And it was only 97 minutes. And I hate overly long movies.

I believe all of Hollywood needs editors. And this one got it right. Everyone needs editors. We all need editors. Yeah, you're speaking our language. You certainly are. Stephen, a proponent of shorter movies. What did you think?

I agree completely with Aisha. And I would add that like the movie Megan, with which this shares a fair bit of plot DNA. They managed to make an effective kind of horror thriller while also constantly making actually pretty cogent commentary about the state of AI and the state of tech and a lot of the language and BS and nonsense and even like tech support issues surrounding this technology.

And they manage to do it in a way that is satirizing AI and satirizing people's interaction with technology in ways that still feel completely plausible. There's a whole subplot in this film where, you know, she's controlled via an app on the phone. And that stuff rings so true. And they're able to play around with it in ways that make the movie twistier and less predictable. While also commenting on the way people interact with this tech, I really dug this movie. I also thought Sophie Thatcher does a really nice job with this part, which could easily have been very one-note. She's able to kind of embody the many different characteristics that she is called upon to embody in ways that I found really effective. And Jack Quaid, at the same time, is able to embody the many different characteristics.

many different things that are expected of his character. I think this is a nifty little movie. If you dug Megan, which was another kind of January dump horror thriller, this movie is going to give you just a big kick. I loved it. Yeah, I dug it too. I mean, certainly, as you've all mentioned, there are familiar elements here, but I liked how quickly it kind of found its own lane, right? This is a robot rights movie, and I'm here for that. There are twists, but the reveals about the characters that we get, if you're watching closely, every seat,

is planted very early on. They've done their due diligence, and I respect that because they respect me. You know, with any kind of genre story like this, there are going to be questions that folks online are going to rush to call plot holes. Why would they even give robots the potential to be this independent intelligence aggressive? Why would they bake that in? That gets explained away so efficiently, so neatly here with a single hand wave, which is they jail broke her, basically, right? They modded her. And I don't need. a Lord dump. I don't need to go back to the factory and see that something is different with the motherboard. All I need is they jailbroker, and I am such a craven cowardly rule follower that it

also did like characterizing work too because as soon as I found out that they modded her, I was like, well, they deserve everything they get better because some of us sheep are content to die inside our walled gardens, right? My walled garden is very pretty. I also dug the sense of humor. And Stephen, to your point, limited but very effective world building here. We do get a few glimpses of how these transactions work, how the maintenance guys see themselves, see their clients. That really read true to me. And that I thought was really well thought out. They introduce a couple of tech guys in this film. And I'm not going to give anything away. But there is such an understanding of how a couple of tech guys would wander onto this scene and behave.

Really made my heart smile. I do think, like a lot of films of this nature, you're doing this really interesting world building. You're having fun with a lot of these ideas, but you're eventually going to sort of have to resolve the plot. And once they get into plot resolution mode, it gets a little more rote. But even there, they're able to find kind of moments of levity and joy introducing ideas I hadn't thought of by the time it got to them. Yeah, it's just a really fun little movie that works on multiple levels. Yeah, no, and I totally agree. And I also like that in this movie, for the most part, the robot isn't Terminator-esque, right?

Which is often what happens where the robot is like this unstoppable force of nature. And that is not what we see. Like, that's another trope. And they're like Einstein, right? And they are like, tap into the main frame. This is different. And I appreciated that. Yeah.

And to your earlier point, like you invest in Iris. You like Iris because Sophie Thatcher is projecting something that she projected an heretic as well, which is woman in peril, but with the chops, the savvy, the practicality. The agency. Thank you. We went to grad school just then. The practicality, the agency to make it. out. You want to believe she could make it out if she just keeps her head. I also like the effort that surprised me that was made to give more emotional beasts to some of these secondary characters.

The Gage Gien couple gets a couple emotional beats. I figured everyone's going to be fed to the sausage grinder immediately, and some of them do. But this kind of reminded me of a very cheesy 2022 film called Margo, which is about a smart house, swanky house that kills horny couples who come to day for the weekend. That went a lot harder in the violence. And sometimes I frankly did wish maybe this film would lean a bit harder into its R rating, but those characters were cardboard cutouts, but I really felt for everybody here. Harvey Gehien. I love Harvey Gehan. Right. Put him in everything. He is so funny. I love the relationship. I loved. He could have just been a throwaway character, but he wasn't.

And I appreciated that. Yeah, if you want awkward vulnerability, you cast this guy. And just his casting gives you such a shortcut to awkward vulnerability. But like you said, Glenn, they do something with it. They're not wasting that talent here. They're able to lean into it in a movie that, as Aisha said, is really a pretty lean hour and a half. They're able to kind of get to some of these emotional beats without wasting time. It's a very efficiently made film.

The thing that I also appreciated was that they didn't lean into the sex, which often happens in these movies to titillate you, right? And then it's like you in the audience become a part of wanting to see the sexy sex bot do the sex sex. And then it's like, what does that say about you? That you're trying to sit here and watch it, right? Like you're watching this. It shied away from that, which, and I'm not against sex scenes at all, But I think in a movie like this where, you know, the person is having sex with the robot who doesn't have agency, isn't that a bit weird?

And so not leaning into that, I appreciated that very much. Right. Well, and they didn't lean into it in any kind of gratuitous way, but they still established that it's awkward. Yes, yes, yes, they did. One member of the other couple at the Lakehouse, Cat, really treats Iris poorly in the beginning. You know, it's not that I don't like you, Iris. It's the idea of you. But then as you watch it, knowing who and what Iris is, you can kind of see that the disdain cat feels is directed at Iris

and not where it should be directed at Josh. And that's a smart comment that the film is making. Now, this film is written directed. This is the first feature, written and directed by a guy named Drew Hancock. And this guy lived the dream. He came up through the Channel 101 online comedy platform, which is Dan Harmon and Rob Shrab. Monthly Film Festival in LA.

The gimmick of that festival is that they are episodes of TV shows, five-minute episodes of TV shows. Then he went on to write for several actual TV shows, and then he wrote Companion, and within 48 hours, had four producers attached. I definitely want to see more from this guy. What do you guys think? Oh, absolutely.

He has a vision, right? You know, and he delivered on this. So I want to see more ideas that you can, maybe things that we've seen before, but then you could take them in another direction. I definitely like the murder and the mayhem. I want more of that.

I want more murder, more mayhem, all of that. I love that. I definitely want to see where this guy goes with this, too. And I think, you know, we talked a little bit about the efficiency of this script. How effectively this script gets from point A to point B to point C. That is real talent. And the fact that even amid the kind of third act resolution stuff, he still manages to shoehorn in jokes and commentary. This is a very sharp

screenwriter. This is a very well-directed movie. I will definitely be curious to see what he does next. Absolutely. Do not let the fact that this is being dumped in theaters in January dissuade you from seeing it. This is a fine. It's a B-movie. But as we've talked about many times on the show, B-movies mean a healthy

cinema. We need B-Movies in this world. Yeah. All right, well, tell us what you think about companion. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH and our letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. Up next, what is making us happy this week?

Now it is time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What is making us happy this week? Ayesha, what is making you happy this week? I love this show on Apple TV, and it is the first show that I've really, really watched, like, two seasons of, like, in real time and not, like, gotten lost or anything like that and really felt like this joy from watching it. And that's silo. Oh, okay.

I love silo. It's about a world where there is 10,000 people underground in a silo. And so it's basically a community that is underground with all these different floors. It's self-sufficient. They have a generator. They have agriculture. They're all down there, and they don't know why. They've been down there for generations.

And so it's a sci-fi thing. And it's basically about figuring out how did these people get there? What is above ground? And like the big thing in this society is if you say you want to go out into the outside, they send you out. And the idea is that when you go out, bad things happen to you. So you don't want to go out. Or maybe you do or maybe you don't.

That's the whole thing. Okay. And I love it. The way they do it, it sounds complicated. But once you watch it, it's so good. and the second season, it just made me feel like, wow, this is TV. I haven't been really watching TV like that. This is weekly TV.

This is how TV can feel. And so that's what I'm loving this week. All right. That is Silo on Apple TV Plus. Thank you very much, Aisha. Stephen Thompson, what is making you happy this week? Okay, so I'm generally skeptical of bands reuniting after many years or even decades apart. It can feel like a nostalgia tour, a cash grab.

or both. I'm not made of stone, however. This week, Riloh Kiley announced that it's getting back together to play its first show together in 17 years. That show's going to be at the Just Like Heaven Festival, and the band is hinting that there's going to be more touring to come. For those who don't know Riloh Kiley, it's the band led by the great Jenny Lewis, who worked with the Postal Service and has had a wonderful, fruitful solo career. For those of us who've had many feelings set to Riloh-Kiley's classic records, especially the execution of all things and more adventurous, both of which somehow came out more than 20 years ago. This is big, big news. The first thing I did upon hearing that big, big news, was crank up Riloh-Kiley's song portions for

foxes. And while it is not the happiest song in the world, it absolutely unmistakably still rules, which in and of itself makes me very, very happy. So that is what is making me happy this week the imminent return of the great and good Riloh-Kiley. I hadn't heard about that and that is making me happy as well. But I have another thing. So it turns out there is a short film available on YouTube that is a satiric response to the film Amelia Perez. If you've been following the Oscar race, Amelia Perez is a film that purports

to be about Mexican culture and the trans experience that is made by a bunch of cis French people who and I'm just going by what I've seen on the screen didn't bother doing a hell of a lot of research. Could not be bothered. So this response film is made by a Mexican trans woman named Camilla Aurora who just flipped the script. That's all she did. It purports to be all about French culture, even though no French people were involved in making it.

So this film is called Johanna Sacrebleu. And Johanna Sacrebleu is a trans heiress to a bagat-making dynasty who falls in love with the trans air to France's largest croissant-making corporation. And his name, of course, is Octugo Ratatoui. I don't want to over-promise here. This is a student film, basically. It's in French and Spanish, and mostly the French is in a very heavy Spanish accent.

But, you know, you don't need to speak the language. You get it because it is nothing. But the cheapest, broadest, most insulting French stereotypes. Every character has a curly French moustache painted on their face. There are lots of berets and scarves. and black and white stripy shirts. And two people show up who have the jankiest

ladybug and cat noir costumes. Ladybug and cat noir are French animated superhero characters. And what I love about this is that it is a response to Amelia Perez to the glibness of that film to its sense that it doesn't owe

anything to the people whose story it's purporting to tell. Its response is not an outrage but in cheap gags just by pointing up how broad and silly and fatally incurious, Amelia Perez is. Does it have songs?

It does have songs. Yes, we. We, of course it does. Does it need to be half an hour? No, but I'm so glad it just exists out there that it's in the world. This is Johanna Sacribleu on YouTube. And that is what is making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations,

sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Aisha Rosco, Stephen Thompson. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Merci, merci, beaucoup. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Lenned Sherburn and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Ritty, and Hello, Come In, provides our theme music.

Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next week.