Babicky dobíjejte presne! (Recharge Grandma on Time) (1984)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 41 minutes runtime, rated 5.7 by 129 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Czechoslovakia.
Verdict: [TBA]
Tagline: Be careful what you wish for.
Wife does everything with the home and two energetic sub-teenage children while Husband nurses his talent. Moreover, she works all day in a pharmaceutical lab and earns more money than he does as a violinist in a radio orchestra. She is desperate for help at home and when the Joneses next door get a robotic grandma so they can party day and night, such is his hostility to the comfortably middle class Joneses that he agrees to buy a battery-powered grandmother to best them.
Wife goes shopping for a top of the line model so they can outdo the Joneses. A 50-page questionnaire has to be completed so that eGranny can be programmed before it is delivered. ‘It will expand on that basic programming with experience,’ said the salesman. Because she does exacting work all day, completing the questionnaire defeats Wife and she goes to bed leaving husband to complete it alone.
While he wants to one-up the Joneses he does not take the task very seriously. Nor did he pay attention to her report on the sales representative’s explanation because he is a man and already knows everything. On the questionnaire he jots down answers more to amuse himself without thinking about it.
Comes the great day and the ever-smiling Granny arrives, charges up, and goes to work. She takes over control of everything, and more. Because Husband has talent, as he said on the questionnaire, he must practice. Accordingly, Granny awakens him at 4 a.m. to exercise that talent on the fiddle.
The eGranny imposes her will on the children to do and re-do their schoolwork to keep them quiet (for his practice). She prepares one exotic meal after another, as per his request because the exhausted wife made the same thing basic dishes every night. Granny serves them hot curry, liquid something, spicy this and bitter that, and other unidentified things from the Middle East, Latin America, South Seas. She vacuums continuously.
All that is bearable, just, but she also expresses his animosity for the Joneses and, by expansion, the Joneses’ granny-bot. Soon the two granny-bots are at war, cutting clothes lines, jamming gates, and then murdering pets. They try to turn off the granny-bot but her emergency battery power kicks in and she recharges herself. When they call the manufacturer they are told that everything the granny-bot has done is in the questionnaire. Oh. No refund.
The Joneses are also overwhelmed by their granny-bot, who has them out jogging at dawn, cleans the house until she wears out the vacuum, and insists that they have parties whether they want to or not. She is also aggressive to the other granny-bot.
The two bots fight it out and destroy each other. The end.
N.B. in this Czech film the husband’s mother, a real grandmother, is in the background but she seems to know how lazy and self-indulgent her son is, and steers clear of this debacle.
In return for freedom from drudgery, higher status, and self-improvement one must surrender freedom to the Granny-state. The children find the granny-bot unpleasant. Her touch is hard and cold. She is forever harassing them with a pleasant smile and sweet voice. Is this metaphorical social commentary or what?
This Czechoslovak film is absurd and satiric. There is a Ray Bradbury story called ‘The Electric Grandmother’ filmed in 1982 that is sappy. Did it inspire this movie? No soft focus here. It has some amusing moments but it is one idea stretched thin. And it is downright unpleasant with the pet murders. The acting offers no compensation.
No Czech words remain from my visit to Charles University.