M3GAN 2.0 review: Not scary doll dud tries too hard to be campy

Running time: 119 minutes.Rated PG-13 (strong violent content, bloody images, some strong language, sexual material, and brief drug references).

In theaters June 27.Toys “R” Ugh.M3GAN, the AI doll with looks to kill, was always going to come back for more carnage. Not because her simple story warranted it.The fun first film was a huge box office hit in 2022.

Of course they’d wring it dry.I did not, however, expect to get completely fed up with the sassy piece of plastic by just the second movie.The second minute! She’s already leapfrogged to “Leprechaun 4: In Space,” except with neither luck nor charm.With “M3GAN 2.0,” the filmmakers have employed a bold strategy: Take a $180-million formula, shred it and forget it.The stupid sequel, again directed by Gerard Johnstone, is not, by any stretch, a horror movie. Instead, the fembot has returned in an annoying, forgettable and hard-to-follow action-comedy, like a thinky “Austin Powers” or “Spy,” that isn’t remotely scary.    “Seed of Chucky” is “The Exorcist” next to “M3GAN 2.0.”What the flick desperately desires is to be campy.

Gay bar fodder.“Rocky Horror,” it’s not.

But boy is it rocky; two hours of obnoxiousness with scattered giggles at the doll’s dry putdowns.Allison Williams is here again as Marnie — sorry, I mean Gemma — the high-strung inventor who has about-faced on artificial intelligence after her traumatic experience with M3GAN. Now she rails against the dangers of AI, and builds tech to enhance humans rather than replace them.She has a boring anti-AI boyfriend named Christian (Aristotle Athari), whose trajectory is 100% clear from the second he opens his mouth. But Gemma, Steven Seagal-obsessed niece Cady (Violet McGraw) and the Geek Squad are forced to team up with former foe M3GAN to defeat an even worse AI creature called AMELIA (Elizabeth Olsen impersonator Ivanna Sakhno).They wind up in some fake-looking castle.

M3GAN reveals she is a marti...