A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Movie Title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Official Website (it might still work): A.I.
Rating (out of 10): 10
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD \| Soundtrack
The Review:

Steven Spielberg always seems to put out a fine product. Whether he has an all-star cast like in Saving Private Ryan or a bunch of scrubs like in Jurassic Park. With his latest film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (this is not a documentary on politicians) Spielberg creates a powerful movie with child actor Haley Joel Osment (The 6^th Sense) in the lead. The only other real name in the film is Jude Law (no disrespect to the other fine actors and actresses). But to be perfectly honest, the actors are not really what the film is about. A.I. is really about messages, some subtle, some not so subtle, but we’ll get to that after a brief synopsis.

The film begins in the not so distant future when global warming (message for the audience) has caused the ice caps to melt, flooding many areas of the world. Our narrator (Ben Kingsley, Rules of Engagement) then tells of how millions of people were displaced, and millions in undeveloped countries died of starvation. He also explains that the developed world avoided calamity by enforcing strict birth control, and by the creation of robots to do most work since they do not require food to run (was never quite sure how the filmmakers decided that robots can run indefinitely without any sort of fuel). Anyway after the explanation of things we discover that a robot company now wants to create a robot that has the ability to love. Well they succeed creating a robot boy named David (Haley Joel Osment) and begin testing it on an employee’s family. This family has a son that is in stasis due to some infection, and there is little hope for recovery. At first Monica (Frances O’Connor, Bedazzled), the mother, is weary of the curious boy robot, but eventually comes to love the boy. So Monica then begins a process in which David will execute a program that then causes him to love. This imprinting process is irreversible and binds the robot to his/her family for life. So if the family decides they no longer want the child, then the robot child must be destroyed. Guess what? The family’s real boy Martin (Jake Thomas) makes a miraculous recovery and comes home, creating problems for David. Soon David is seen as a hazard for Martin, and it is determined that the family must take David back to the factory for disposal. In the end though, Monica can’t do this to David, and instead abandons him in the woods.

Now David is on a new journey, a journey to become a real boy so that he can be with his mother once again. His main companion on this trip is Teddy (Jack Angel) a medium sized toy bear that is a robot too. Teddy provides much of the comic relief in an otherwise serious picture. It is on this journey that the filmmakers unleash most of their messages, and where David meets Gigolo Joe (Jude Law, Enemy at the Gates), who helps him on his journey. Some of the messages are meant to cover current issues such as racism through the prejudices expressed by the organics (real people) onto the mechanicals (robots), which includes what amounted to lynchings. Then there is the overall message of what makes a person a person, and as an extension of that, at what point should a robot be considered a sentient being (which will be an issue in the not to distant future). To keep from spoiling things, I’ll stop here.

As you may already know, the late Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) started this project a decade ago, and Spielberg has now finished it. The writing credits go to Spielberg, Ian Watson, and Brian Aldiss. Other cast members not mentioned already are Sam Robards, Brendan Gleeson, William Hurt (Lost in Space), Clara Bellar, and Kelly Felix to name a few.

First of all as I wrap things up, I will say that those with strong religious beliefs may not want to see this film since religion is kept completely out of the movie (and many true believers might not like this). Second, be sure to think about the film and the messages, otherwise the film isn’t worth watching since this is not a shootem-up blowem-up flick (also if you have a low IQ, you too shouldn’t see the film since most of it will go over your head). All that said, this is also not a happy movie and one that deals with death in a very real and personal way (you will think about your own mortality), and thus children shouldn’t watch A.I. either.

The acting was just fine, but that didn’t matter since it is the story that drives this film. The special effects and scenery are magnificent, but again that is not what is important.

It is all about the story, a story that makes you think. Despite some reservations about giving perfect scores to films that have believability issues (what makes the robots go?), I will do it this time. So A.I. Artificial Intelligence gets ten couches out of ten for the About-Movies.com rating. Goodnight.