Movie Review: Tom Hanks Trains a Robot to Take Care of a Dog in Finch

Finch is an overly familiar and rather limp attempt at futuristic, environmental dystopia. The film stars Tom Hanks as the title character, Finch, one of the last living humans on Earth, apparently. We don’t see many other people, others we briefly see are in the midst of being murdered. Finch manages his life by applying his engineering genius to create an enclave to hide in and a means to search for needed resources, or what’s left of those resources.

As we join the story, Finch is clearing the last bit of an abandoned grocery store for the last can of dog food and a few other necessities. Joining Finch is a dog-like robot who bounds around searching for food for Finch. The dog-robot doesn’t eat, rather Finch also has an actual dog that has become his closest friend. The dog food is for the real dog, though Finch takes a taste for himself. Supplies in the St Louis area, where Finch has created his haven, have become scarce and he’s working on leaving.

Before he goes however, Finch needs to finish a project. Worried about what will happen to his dog if and when he dies, Finch has set about building an A.I powered robot which he is imbuing with knowledge specific to caring for a dog. The autonomous robot will have the ability to learn and, as the story progresses, the robot, voiced by Caleb Landry Jones, develops a real personality and takes the name of Jeff.

Jeff is impetuous and overly eager to please and this creates a few complications, especially since he and the real dog aren’t getting along right away. And that’s pretty much it. You might expect there to be other dystopian elements such as dangerous future gangs fighting for resources or some sort of alien threat. Nope, it’s really a relationship drama about a dying man training a robot to raise and care for his beloved pet.

There are incidents, a tornado hits and nearly destroys the modified R.V that Finch built to carry them. Jeff nearly crashes the R.V in another scene and Finch is forced to explain why he and the dog cannot walk in the sunlight. In this future, Earth has completely lost the atmosphere due to Climate Change and the sun now burns at an extraordinary speed and danger. We see Finch put his hand out into the sun and it burns quickly and painfully.

Thus the danger is made real for Jeff and the rest of the movie is Jeff trying his best to help his makeshift family, human and robot. As Finch’s health declines we watch Jeff develop empathy and other human qualities while working to befriend Finch’s dog. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this as a story, but I feel like I have seen things like this before. Maybe not the specific scenario of a robot being trained to care for a dog, but this hamfisted yet still very realistic take on the ravages of climate change.

Finch unfortunately feels like a compromised product, a movie that wants you to buy in on an adorable robot caring for a dying man’s dog but also a movie that explores a realistic idea of what climate change is going to cause in the future. It’s not a tract that gets at the heart of scaring people into action about climate change, it’s a movie that very obviously, almost insultingly, a movie that tries a spoonful of sugar approach to teaching about climate change.

Here’s a sweet story about beloved American dad, Tom Hanks, recalling his beloved role in Castaway, but this time with three Wilson’s, one of which can talk, and an adorable story about a robot befriending a dog oh and it's a realistic depiction of our future if we don't address climate change immediately. It’s neither harsh enough to make a real point about climate change or cute enough to be a family friendly story about robots and puppies. In that way, Finch feels inert, pointless and sputtering toward an unearned feel good, warm and fuzzy ending.

Tom Hanks is, as always, a winning presence. His Finch is the kind of Tom Hanks character that is easy to love and I really did enjoy this character and his performance. That said, he appears stuck in neutral in a movie about climate change that also wants to be appealing enough to draw a large audience. That’s not a needle that is easy to thread and Finch comes up short in the attempt to be both political and broadly appealing.

Finch debuts on Apple TV on November 5th, 2021.