Tom Hanks’ latest effort is a road movie across a post-apocalyptic landscape in the unmemorable Finch .

Hank stars as Finch, a robotics engineer and one of the few survivors of a solar event that has decimated the planet. In a surface environment where seconds exposed to the sun’s rays lead to severe burns, Finch hunkers down in an underground bunker with his sole companions – a WALL-E -like robot pal and his dog, Goodyear.

A decade into the “new normal,” Finch’s primary concern is finding care for his canine pal once he’s gone. Enter his latest creation, a robot (a motion-capture performance by Caleb Landry Jones ), who delights in learning what it means to be alive. With a disastrous storm approaching, the motley crew sets out on a road trip to the west coast in search of a future.

Filled with oddball humour, Finch ‘s main strength isn’t Hanks – it’s Jones. The actor shows true depth and humanity in robot form. The robot (whose eventual name is a delight when it’s finally revealed) transforms from sounding like a mechanical Borat to more like Jones proper as he fills himself with knowledge and a greater understanding of humanity. He’s Chappie , but less prone to violence and throwing gang signs.

Jones excels at capitalizing his youthful exuberance for knowledge. Next to him, however, Hanks’ Finch seems even more dour and one-note. Flashbacks show us that Finch was a bit of a bummer before the apocalypse, too. The robot has far more humanity than Finch, who seems so one-note in Hanks’ vast filmography. It feels like Hanks is sleep-walking through this performance, which makes it even more astonishing that this was once destined for the big screen and not its streaming home on Apple TV+.

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik ( Game of Thrones ) , Finch drifts between genuine humour and delight to more cloying exchanges. With ham-fisted emotions, Finch fails to capitalize on the intriguing ethical questions that arise from Finch’s actions. What does it say about Finch to bring a “living” creature into a dying world, knowing he’ll eventually be abandoned? Meanwhile, the truly haunting sci-fi elements promised by the film’s setting are kept off-screen. We’re told there are other survivors to fear, but aside from a flashback and one brief encounter, there is no tension or strife to keep audiences interested.

While the idea of a dog-sitting robot who really wants to learn to drive seems fit for a family viewing, the film’s wild tonal inconsistencies and depictions of graphic illness make it less child-friendly than one might assume. Finch ‘s life lessons are predictable, by-the-book instructions that suck any bit of life out of the film’s second half. Ultimately , Finch has little to offer in terms of takeaways beyond the tired old “it’s not the journey but the friends we (literally) make along the way.” I’ll take anything I learned from Johnny-5 in Short Circuit over this any day.

Finch is now streaming Apple TV+.