Action-packed, cloying and, considering the subject matter, kind of stupid, at least we can take comfort in the fact that Jennifer Lopez throws herself into the exoskeleton/AI sci-fi thriller “Atlas.” And not just because she’s the title character.

OK, maybe that explains her commitment — professionalism, an actress who always seems to be the first or second call start-up film distributors make (CBS Films, etc.) recognizing her good fortune and making the best of a middling project.

But why does every J Lo picture seem like a vanity project? She’s over 50 and playing “39,” coiffed and made up to the max, so much so that Smith, her AI in-armor “assistant” as she hunts for a rogue robot who led an Earth-wide AI “rebellion,” feels compelled to take note of it.

“Vanity is in fact one of your defining flaws,” Smith (voiced by Gregory James Cohan) declares as our heroine tries to get the handle of this fighting-inside-a-robot-costume thing.

The script she’s stuck with is sort of an “Aliens” meets “Robocop” combat tale, with one of the world’s formost AI experts, daughter of the expert (Lana Parilla) whose theories and tinkering got Earth INTO this mess decades earlier, hurled into combat with a cocky assault team led by a Colonel played by Sterling K. Brown, with Mark Strong overseeing this deep space hunt for that rogue robot, Harlan (Simi Liu).

Atlas Shepherd “WARNED them,” in classic Ripley in “Aliens” style, about what they were up against. “They wouldn’t listen.” They effed around. They found out.

That leaves her all but alone on a distant planet, hounded by humanoid AI (Abraham Popoola is their supersoldier bot), trying to stop Harlan from making a return to Earth “to finish what I started,” the machine/AI rebellion of 28 years before.

Lopez tumbles and bristles, vents and rages, mostly strapped into a seat inside a roboskeleton animated by CGI. Atlas flashes back to her mother’s early reassurances about the “neural link” technology that drove AI to figure humans were just in the way, bristles at being “scanned” and refuses help time after time, only to change her mind at the last second.

After a generic “world in chaos” montage opening, and an explosive action sequence once the “team” makes its beleaguered landing, the picture settles into Smith the robotic AI “explaining” this and that and Atlas arguing with him as they try to accomplish their mission against incredible odds.

Capture, AI interrogation, wisecracks, AI profanity, escape and final confrontation rub against Atlas’s inability to work well with others and mommy issues.

Director Brad Peyton goes for a flippant PG-13 tone, which is a blessing, considering how silly the action (not the AI warning messaging) is. But in the end, that just makes “Atlas” easier to dismiss.

I’ve always liked Lopez. Like Brown. Have enjoyed Liu’s recent turns and I’ve always been on Team Mark Strong. But this is pretty bad, and can’t have been any fun to film, either.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Sterling K. Brown, Simi Liu, Lana Parilla,
Abraham Popoola and Mark Strong

Credits: Directed by Brad Peyton, scripted by Aron Eli Coleite and Leo Sardarian. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:58