Parents' Guide to Warning

This selection of intertwined short sci-fi tales, all dealing with the idea of troublesome technology, vary in quality; there are a few bright, tense moments, but none really pack much of a punch. The astronaut sequence that starts Warning is more harrowing than it is thoughtful, although it has some fine visual effects. But then the first sequence after it, the "God" smart device story, is lightly comical in tone. They don't match. The rest of the sequences are similar in tone to each other, all hopeless, with little humor and fascinatingly weird set designs. But the sudden endings fall short. The "Charlie" robot sequence especially winds up with a "huh?" It's too bad, because Everett, as Charlie, cooks up an ingenious balance of annoying and piteous.

Moreover, Warning has a rhythm problem. It starts with three intertwining stories; some seem to be told straight through, while others are broken up. It feels almost random, as if the editor left the room and just let the tapes play through, overlapping willy-nilly. When a new story begins at well past the halfway point, it feels jarring, as if it arrived too late to join the party. The best sequence by far succeeds because of Eve's hilariously detached performance. Her Claire -- the owner of the "God" device -- seems to exist in a perpetual fog, and her line deliveries, many of them simply giving up with a sighing "OK," hit just the right note for laughs. It's too bad the rest of Warning couldn't have found more of a tone -- or a point.