The famous British zoologist Richard Dawkins claims we are nothing more than “gigantic lumbering robots,” “survival machines” for microscopic things called genes. By “remote control,” these genes make us eat, fuck, and make more gene machines. Only such a severe sociobiological theory of the meaning of human existence can animate this dead-boring film. If you come to the theater unequipped with Dawkins’s theory, you will only have one thing to entertain you: the charming eyes, lips, and hips of its star, Karina Smulders.
How else can you see these Dutch women and men but as “gigantic lumbering robots”? The post–World War II women are not flying to paradisical New Zealand of their own volition; their genes are making them do it, making them get on the plane, making them eat the food on the plane, making them marry these bland Dutch farmers, making them make babies. But the robots have so many problems. So many things get in the way of their plans. This robot is ready to have lots of babies, but some genetic mutation has damaged her reproductive system. Another robot makes a baby, but she is psychologically unfit to have more and more and more. The genes weep and moan. Another robot does make babies with her husband, but she really wants to make babies with another man, her lover—the genes actually have no problem with her particular problem.
The film begins with a death—one robot (Rutger Hauer, the replicant in Blade Runner) has been used up by a lifetime of fucking and transmitting his genes (“Wake up, it’s time to die”). The middle of the film is a long and pretty graphic bump-and-grind sex scene—the genes trying to cross the bridge to immortality. The film ends with some genes succeeding and others failing to replicate themselves. And what other story does life need to tell but this one? 
This article has been updated since its original publication.
are the genes a character in this movie or are you sir the character?
Congratulations Charles, this one is more awkward than your usual articles.