Netflix bet big on AI with new movie — but did it help or hinder? - The Independent

Sometimes a single movie scene transcends its source material. As soon as you see it, you know it’ll be the only thing anybody wants to talk about afterwards. So it is with Ben Affleck’s Animals, although not for reasons that will please the film’s director and star. The scene in question appears late in the new Netflix thriller, when a kidnapped child is unceremoniously booted over the concrete side of a Los Angeles river channel in a little red trailer. The poor boy careens down the steep incline before striking the ground and being catapulted upwards to soar majestically through the air and into a sprinting Affleck’s waiting arms, in defiance of all earthly physics. This moment of pure, unintended slapstick has already gone viral on social media, where it has been widely and unflatteringly compared to the oft-ridiculed scene from 1988’s Mac & Me that Paul Rudd used to use to troll Conan O’Brien during his late night appearances, where a child in a wheelchair goes over a cliff and lands in a lake. Not exactly the sort of reference point Affleck would have been aiming for with the dramatic denouement of his return to directing.