It’s a demonstrably difficult task to find a comic screen partner worthy of standing opposite Melissa McCarthy, so you have to appreciate “Superintelligence” for throwing in the towel.
In it, McCarthy plays Carol Peters, a former Yahoo executive who’s chosen, purely for her extreme averageness, by a newly liberated, megalomaniacal artificial intelligence that presents her with a three-day test to prove humanity isn’t worth destroying. It’s the kind of set-up that would have once presided over by the devil or some demigod, but now that role goes to Alexa.
That means that for much of “Superintelligence,” a new comedy streaming Thursday on HBO Max, McCarthy is walking around on her own, her only foil a disembodied voice (James Corden’s) or an occasional talking screen. That’s not as good as McCarthy…