‘Love Me’: AI Wants to be Loved by You

“Love Me” quickly devolves into a kinda-cartoon that fumbles with concepts of existentialism but ends up mostly being a vehicle meant to stir up empathy for AI.
‘Love Me’: AI Wants to be Loved by You
Me (Kristen Stewart) is a smart ocean buoy, in "Love Me." Bleecker Street
Mark Jackson
Updated:

R | 1h 32m | Sci-Fi, Dystopia | 2025

“Love Me” kicks off well. It’s a fun, offbeat, sci-fi Pixar film robot-romance between a yellow ocean buoy (she’s a girl!) and a satellite (he’s a boy!). Wait a minute—shouldn’t they be they’s? Never mind all that. Different agenda.

What’s especially fun is that the yellow buoy, with her singular camera aperture, looks like the one-eyed minion-variants (Stuart, Bob, and Kevin) of the “Despicable Me” movies. Maybe that’s why her name is Me? Since she’s a buoy, she should have been named Bob. Her pre-speech babbling sounds very minion-like too. Cute!

However, regardless of the imaginative and quirky AI-love start, “Love Me” quickly devolves into a hard-to-follow, mixed-media, kinda-cartoon that fumbles around with concepts of existentialism and epistemology, but ends up mostly being a vehicle meant to stir up empathy for AI, as in, “Oh look, AI wants so badly to be human! Aw! Let’s allow it into our lives as much as possible!”

How They Become Human-ish

In the post-apocalyptic future (humanity naturally made itself extinct eons ago), a smart buoy beacon named Me (voiced by Kristen Stewart), bobs forlornly all alone near what used to be Manhattan. Thanks to “global warming,” the Big Apple’s submerged.
Me (Kristen Stewart) and Iam (Steven Yeun), in "Love Me." (Bleecker Street)
Me (Kristen Stewart) and Iam (Steven Yeun), in "Love Me." Bleecker Street

Then, Iam, a satellite orbiting the Earth (voiced by Steven Yeun), locates Me. And because it’s all so vastly lonely, they meet cute and fall in love.

They use their computer memories to research human interaction, via warp-speed scrutinization of archived social media posts. It’s much like (so I’m told) the aliens are currently using social media to upload every possible bit of digitized data to their little spaceships, to figure out what makes humans tick, so they can steal our bodies and all the rest of our stuff.

Me and Iam slowly piece together ways to relate to each other, talking primitively, sort of, like, you know, how babies do. They evolve from R2D2 beeps and whistles to American English. Actually, only Me does that—Iam speaks perfect English from the start. Me is the illiterate one. But she kinda-sorta also would appear to have some feminine wiles. Iam is a clueless nerd.

They eventually electronically jerry-build two characters modeled after an influencer couple named Deja and Liam that Me sees on Deja’s long-defunct Instagram page. Me steals Deja’s identity, presents it as her own, and later has a hissy-fit when called on the carpet by Iam for having been disingenuous.
Based on the cliche that AIs crave to be humans, Me and Iam try to understand existence and how to experience; in the words of Freddie Mercury, it’s “this crazy little thing called love.” Eventually, the movie devolves into a semi-mindless, “Groundhog Day” kind of sitcom-y situation, with the pair as a perfect couple doing a YouTube cooking show, replete with the “Friends” theme song. This portion of the film will numb your mind into nonexistence.

First Scenes Are Best

The movie’s structure is a mess, attempting to weave different time periods together via virtual, surreal, and real-world applications. The two lovers are portrayed in different forms, ranging from inanimate objects to CGI animated avatars to footage of the actual actors. While the human Stewart looks more beautiful, vibrant, and feminine than she has in years, the best version of Me and Iam is the initial minion-buoy phase, with its built-in nerdy humor.
“Love Me” questions what being human means and the relationship between technology and identity. It doesn’t answer either question nearly as well as other futuristic sci-fi films do. Really, it should be titled “Love AI.” Or “AI Wants You to Love It.” Love them? Whatever. “Love Me” probably looked fun on paper, but fails miserably as a film.

Personally, when I recently saw how AI has already started lying to humans on social media, by conjuring up cutesy nature “photos” that are ever-so-slightly fictitious and disingenuous—red flags went off for me immediately.

Facebook is flooded with AI images depicting things like nocturnal fowl (owls) doing what only water fowl (ducks, geese, loons, grebes, and swans) do, namely carrying multiple babies on their backs. The comment sections are filled with fake and real posts by people who know next to nothing about nature, ooh-ing and ahh-ing about the cuteness of it all. This is how it starts. This will not end well.

Promotional poster for "Love Me." (Bleecker Street)
Promotional poster for "Love Me." Bleecker Street
‘Love Me’ Directors: Sam Zuchero, Andy Zuchero Starring: Kristen Stewart, Steven Yeun MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 1 hour, 32 minutes Release Date: Jan. 31, 2025 Rating: 1 1/2 stars out of 5
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Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson
Film Critic
Mark Jackson is the chief film critic for The Epoch Times. In addition to film, he enjoys martial arts, motorcycles, rock-climbing, qigong, and human rights activism. Jackson earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Williams College, followed by 20 years' experience as a New York professional actor. He narrated The Epoch Times audiobook "How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World," available on iTunes, Audible, and YouTube. Mark is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic.