Auggie review – watchable hi-tech satire doesn’t quite know what to say

Richard Kind is compelling as the retiree seduced by a VR companion', but the film fails to do much with its rather familiar premise

The face of American character actor Richard Kind - melancholy, hangdog, a little dyspeptic - is exactly right for this high-concept midlife satire from director and co-writer Matt Kane. It's a variation on a familiar theme the time is the near future and Kind plays Felix, an architect in his 60s who has been pushed out of the firm he helped build and is now at home grumpily adjusting to unwanted retirement. His busy wife and grownup daughter have no great need of him these days so poor, emasculated Felix takes comfort in his hi-tech retirement gift: a pair of Auggie" glasses, through which the wearer can see an augmented reality companion", a virtual-reality hologram of exactly the kind of submissively understanding person your subconscious wants to see - in Felix's case, an extremely attractive young woman (played by newcomer Christen Harper).

Felix understands that this is just a projection, a geisha hallucination programmed to respond with the right answers and expressions. But inevitably he begins to fall in love with her, and toys with the extra" that Auggie owners are invited to purchase: a pair of hi-tech underpants that will allow him to feel his Auggie companion intimately, while his wife is out all day at her prestigious job.