The most unwelcome movie star of 2019? Amazon's Alexa

The smart home device has taken on-screen product placement to an obtrusive extreme

Jaws with Alexa.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Amazon)

Twenty-five minutes into Netflix's The Knight Before Christmas, there is — for all intents and purposes — a commercial break. Vanessa Hudgens, who plays a schoolteacher disenchanted with love, walks into her inexplicably massive guest house with Josh Whitehouse, a 14th-century knight who's been transported to modern-day Ohio, and activates her Amazon Echo. "Hi," Alexa, Amazon's AI helper, chirps in her robotic monotone. "What can I do for you today?"

That might sound bad — it is bad — but in The Knight Before Christmas' defense, it's far from the first movie to cast Amazon's smart home device in a speaking role. Over the past year, Amazon has embarked on what might be described as a product placement blitz, with the company presumably paying to insert Alexa into the plot of countless movies and TV shows. (An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation that the examples mentioned in this article were paid placements.) Often these efforts are awkward and contrived, with characters abruptly and randomly compelled to demonstrate the features of their smart home devices. Product placement itself is nothing new, but Amazon's forced Echo integrations have made Alexa the most unwelcome up-and-coming movie star of the year.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.