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Netflix’s strange sci-fi story Bigbug turns a robot uprising into French farce
Sometimes, the best way to depict huge, earth-shattering events is to severely restrict the point of view. It’s cheaper to make a Shaun of the Dead than a World War Z, but narrowing the focus also recasts high-concept problems on a human scale, with human stakes. What filmmakers lose in spectacle by keeping the story small, they make up for in drama. Maybe that’s why Netflix’s Bigbug, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s French sci-fi comedy about a robot uprising, never leaves the confines of one suburban house. (Or maybe it was just a cheap way to make a film, especially during a pandemic.) Bigbug’s characters aren’t trying to overthrow their robot overlords. They’re just trying to get outside.