At a time in the future, an illness known as agoraphobic brain disease (known as AGD) has crippled much of humanity. Many citizens are unable to leave their houses and are unable to have much contact with other humans.
One of these sufferers is Stephen, who longs to be with his girlfriend who he only sees via video chat. He sees a commercial advertising a robot called the 'Shaddy doppelganger' which is supposed to take on the face of anyone the user wishes to talk to. Because of its realistic appearance, the users will feel as though they are actually talking to each other face to face.
Stephen jumps at the opportunity, despite his girlfriend’s hesitancy. But what seems like an ideal solution has consequences he had never even thought of.
This certainly is a unique plot, and one that not many people would think of. Futuristic films generally revolve around totalitarian governments and not a future that, apart from an odd mental pandemic, seems relatively unchanged. It also raises some interesting questions; despite the information age, we still crave human contact, but what lengths will we go to get it?
However, there really are a lot of things that need to be mentioned about this film.
First of all, the initial reference to AGD comes during the infomercial advertising the Shaddy Doppelganger. Considering that the vast majority of the population has this illness, there is certainly no reason to explain it in detail to them. This important aspect could easily be introduced at the beginning of the film in either narration or even just text. (The Mask of Zorro did this very simply, and Equilibrium used narration, video, and text very effectively.) In addition, the infomercial itself really didn't sound like an infomercial. The man speaking about his invention wasn't as bubbly and excited as infomercial hosts usually are. There were none of the standard black-and-white shots of people doing things horribly unsuccessfully to demonstrate a need for the product, and none of the standard cheesy lines ("But wait! There's more!"). Infomercials are so common that they are very often imitated.
And speaking of the infomercial; after viewing it, Stephen talks to his girlfriend and repeats the entire thing over again. Even if she hasn't seen it, the audience doesn't need to hear it. There could either be a cut, after the interview ends, to that conversation and the girlfriend expressing her disbelief. Or one could go the more artistic route and cut the two scenes together, alternating between the infomercial and Stephen's conversation. This would be particularly effective if more of a standard cheesy infomercial format was followed, as there wouldn't be as much dependence on listening to everything that is said there.
Finally, what is perhaps the most important thing to mention, the title of this film is spelled incorrectly. The word "shaddy" (shad-ee) was used in the title (and the website), and at first I thought I was mistaken in my assumption, but the word "Shady" (shade-ee) was used by the characters. It is likely that many people won't notice, as it is an odd word, but any good spell checker will fix it. While spelling may not be everyone’s strong suit, proper grammar and spelling in a film's title is absolutely critical. It is the first thing that anyone will see when lookin at your movie, and any misspellings will give it the label of unprofessionalism right off the bat. (If the reality was that, like the band Linkin Park, the name was changed to match a website URL availability, then ADR needs to be applied to the spoken word in the film to match the spelling.) [Editor's Note: Apparently the disparity was an intentional choice by the director, believing that, in the future, the breakdown of the written and spoken language will lead to multiple acceptable spellings and pronunciation for most words. Since this isn't otherwise indicated in the film, it's unlikely that the audience would be aware of this intent.]
