A.I. Artificial Intelligence

The short review: if you're in the mood for E. T. then you will LOVE this flick. If you're in the mood for 2001: A Space Odyssey then you'll HATE it.

Steven Spielberg, the director who brought us family-friendly scifi/fantasy hits like "E. T.", Amazing Stories, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, inherited a project that was originally headed by chillingly cold scifi master Stanley Kubrick (2001 A Space Odyssey, Clockwork Orange). Spielberg delivered, 2 years after Kubrick's death, "A. I." The familiar two-letter acronym title ought to spell out for us the direction Spielberg chose to take with Kubrick's material. The result, as you might guess, is a very mixed bag of creepy disturbing brilliance and groan worthy Disney type stuff all jumbled together. Much like putting m&ms on a pizza, some elements should never be mixed.

Plot: An artificially created robot child navigates the gauntlet of human cruelty while slipping into a Disney-esque subplot (literally Disney) of trying to find the Blue Fairy from the fable Pinocchio so she'll turn him into a real boy. You can practically skip the first half hour of this 2 1/2 hour movie because it amounts to a very predictable and irritating parade of scenes where the robot child is bullied for being a robot, despised by his apathetic 'father' and erratically loved/hated by his weak willed 'mother'. You can literally skip the whole string of clichés and you won't be missing anything. The movie starts to pick up after the 30 min mark when the child finds himself on the run.

It picks up due to the excellent performance of Jude Law as "Gigolo Joe" a suave, charming, not-too-bright but very loveable cyborg prostitute. Jude plays the character with a very interesting spin: not a soulless hunk of lumbering metal like we've seen in all of our Hollywood robots but as an animated, cat-like, Gene-Kelley-Singin-In-The-Rain street dancer with a ton of personality and some great dance moves. I don't know if Jude won any awards for this performance but he really should have.

Accompanying Jude's entry into the film, the story becomes considerably darker but not in a predictably melodramatic way like the first part of the film. Rather, we are immersed into a wonderfully nightmarish, satirical portrayal of human cruelty as we witness the renegade robots being subjected to a sickening carnival show in which they are mutilated in horrific ways to the rapturous applause of human crowds. Yes, it's disturbing but it's done with an air of dark comedy like in Terry Gilliam's masterpiece "Brazil" or in Veerhoven's "Robocop" or even Kubrick's own "Clockwork Orange".

Unfortunately for the final 2 acts of the film we return to Disney territory as the robot child becomes obsessively (and quite stupidly, for an advanced computerized intelligence) rapt in chasing down the imaginary character from a Disney fable, that Blue Fairy. Complicating our enjoyment, there are at least 3 false endings where you feel like the story could've wrapped up on a poetic note, but it keeps going. By the time the real ending happens we're too emotionally exhausted to feel it.

While being a failure on these levels, "A. I." is an absolute triumph in terms of special effects. The visuals were way ahead of their time in 2001, and they still hold up better than most big budget scifi films today, 20 years later. Unfortunately the delivery screams 1980s Spielberg (E. T.) and might leave you feeling very skeptical about the whole experience. Unless, like I said up front, you're in the mood for E. T. - in that case you'll have a wonderful time. But in either case we can only imagine how Stanley Kubrick had intended to approach his story as originally planned: an evolution of the deeply philosophical & abstract theme presented in "2001" about the newborn lifeform finding its footing in a dark and hostile human world.

Steven Spielberg's AI fails to live up to its billing, which really bothers me, because artificial intelligence is such a rich and variegated subject, traversing the fields of biophysics, psychology, philosophy, and even religion, that the payoffs for careful consideration of this subject are potentially great, perhaps even inspiring. Spielberg, it seems, didn't even bother to make a trip to the library, preferring instead to invest awkward and incomprehensible phrases like `human beings are the key to the meaning of existence' with eschatological gravitas.

Throughout this film, Spielberg drives home one theme over and over and over: humans are more programmatic, both in their thinking, and their behavior, than `mechas.' We watch David's parents first adopt and then abandon the robot boy because of their prejudice about what is `real' and what is not, a deliberate irony seeing as how David is in many ways more human than their biological son. We see a perfectly ridiculous `Flesh Fair' thrown into the movie to embellish this point: the `artificiality' these humans seek to destroy might just as well be their own.

At worst, the movie has a psychotic message. At the heart of the film, Professor Hobby, who designed David, delivers an impassioned speech, telling him that his singular quest to become a `real' boy at the magical hand of the Blue Fairy is a human flaw which is also humanity's `greatest single' gift: The ability to `chase down dreams. ` Problem is, if a human dreamed of becoming a non-organic being, and could not find surcease from his labors to do so, he would become, if not already, psychotic. Why Mr. `Hobby' couldn't have made the boy to accept himself as he is, which is the essence of human spirituality, seems never to have occurred to him. And so one leaves the movie with a sick feeling in the pit of one's stomach, due largely to the fact that this psychotic idea is presented as an axiom, with religious fervor.

AI succeeds in being artificial, but not in showing intelligence.

AI - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / (2001) ***1/2 (out of four)

By Blake French:

"AI - Artificial Intelligence" is the hardest kind of movie to review-but it's also the most enjoyable kind of movie to watch. It's been over three weeks since my screening of Steven Spielberg's emotionally harrowing epic about a robot boy. Before writing my review, I wanted to let its themes, content, and characters sink into my head and make a solid impact. The film was based on an idea by Stanley Kubrick, but when he died in 1999, Speilberg took charge of the project. I could spend pages discussing the techniques of Kubrick's intentions and Spielberg's decisions, but I will not. Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg are two of the greatest directors American cinema has to offer; it's pure pleasure watching their ideas clash and flow. I am not going to examine each individual theme here, either. That would ruin the movie for you.

"AI - Artificial Intelligence" presents many themes on screen, but it's important to take what you get out of it. Whenever I read a review of Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" or "2001: A Space Odyssey" I feel influenced by the reviewer's interpretation of the movie's themes. Every time I watch either of those movies I get something new out of it. I hate it when other critics state the movie's themes on paper as if it's a fact. There is far too much room for interpretation to reveal this movie's message, or the message of any Kubrick film for that matter. Ask 100 people, and you might get 100 different answers. "AI - Artificial Intelligence" is that kind of movie-one of the year's best.

Critics and audiences alike have torn apart this movie's ending-a clear miscalculation by Spielberg. If Kubrick were in charge, the movie would have called it quits about twenty minutes earlier in an unsettling sequence that takes place in the ocean. But Speilberg, who always seems entranced by science fiction, injects an additional segment into the mix that does not work quite as well, but isn't so completely awful that it deserves such harsh criticism. It still leaves us with an open, startled emotional disorientation. I left the theater with tears in my eyes. The movie before the conclusion is so complex, moving, and involving in so many different ways the last twenty minutes didn't even come close to spoiling the movie for me.

"AI" transpires sometime in the near future after the polar ice caps have melted and flooded coastal cities and reduced natural resources. Mechanical androids have become popular since they require no commodities. Reproduction has also become highly illegal. Machines provide sexual services and if anyone wants a child, they will purchase a robot. However, the difference between a robot child and a living child is that robots cannot love. That's the task professor Hobby (William Hurt) of Cybertronics Manufacturing has solved. He has made a robot child that can love.

We can separate "AI" into two separate segments. I do not want to reveal too much about each plot because the pleasure of watching this movie evolves from the revealing of the connecting plots. I will, however, briefly say the first details a robot child's interaction within a family, and the second deals with the robot's estrangement from its family and the quest to regain the mother's love.

I can imagine the material in Kubrick's hands. The movie's opening scene has a female robot begin to undress in a public office. Speilberg cuts the action before she reveals any explicit nudity. Kubrick would have had various shots of full frontal nudity. Spielberg, never comfortable with sexual material, leaves out much of the motivation behind Kubrick's ideas. One of the biggest problems in "AI" is the lack of edge with the sexual content. Jude Law plays a robot gigolo who lives in a sex fantasy called Rouge City where people from everywhere come to seek sexual satisfaction. The central character, a robot boy played by Haley Joel Osment, motivates every action in the story except for the scenes in Rouge City. Why contain such a perverse character and setting when his entire existence simply displays a mood that has already been well established. Obvious, the filmmakers toned the aspects of "AI" down to warrant a gutless PG-13 rating-but why? The movie isn't appropriate for children anyway, and it's far too complex. Undoubtedly if Kubrick were in charge "AI" would have to be re-cut to avoid an NC-17 rating. Spielberg should have either taken advantage of the perverse material or completely eliminated it.

Here I am, doing exactly what I said that I wouldn't do, and at nearly 900 words, I still have not clearly expressed my own opinions on the film. I have many notes in front of my that display my reaction as I watched the film, but I am not going to use them-they reveal too much about the movie. "AI" is a very personal film, a deeply moving, scientific, careful, and harrowing motion picture that displays startling talent on screen and behind the scenes. The special effects are extraordinary. The performances are alarming-the immensely talented Haley Joel Osment may once again be up for an Academy Award nomination. Go see the movie, then talk about it with others. It's the kind of film that you can spend hours thinking about, then go see it again.

Stanley Kubrick made a career out of directing brilliant but unpleasant movies. The ultimate example is "A Clockwork Orange," which I saw for the first time just a few months ago. I found it astonishing, thought-provoking, and visually brilliant. But my experience watching the film was not in any way a pleasant one. The film chronicles the hideous crimes of a charmless psychopath, and ultimately how he is captured and subjected to an almost unimaginable series of tortures. I suppose some moviegoers might find those kinds of scenes entertaining, but I do not. Nevertheless, I consider it a great film, and a tremendously important one.

"A.I." is harder for me to justify. While not technically a Kubrick film, it is a Kubrick project that was finally directed by Steven Spielberg, following Kubrick's death. The result is a film that manages to combine the worst qualities of these two great filmmakers: it has Kubrick's obtuseness as well as Spielberg's sentimentality. The ending is deliberately designed to frustrate, to remove itself from any possible human reference point that we can easily relate to. At the same time, it's the sort of film that wants to be loved. There is even a teddy bear character that evokes mystery and awe more than cuteness. This awkward fusion of purposes left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

I feel unjustified for giving the film as low a rating as 6/10. I just so intensely disliked the film that I have great difficulty rating it any higher, despite its clever and thoughtful handling of the concept of artificial intelligence. No doubt Kubrick has covered this territory before, in "2001" with the character of Hal. But he seems to expand on it in this film, which features two android characters, a child robot played by Haley Joel Osment, and a robot gigolo (don't ask) played by Jude Law. The behavior of these characters is so subtle and complex that I was often left wondering what they were thinking and feeling, what the experience of being a robot was like, if such an experience is possible. I personally believe that there is something special about human subjective experience that cannot be duplicated by computer technology. But this movie presents the opposite view very compellingly, and without taking the standard route of making the androids seem human.

In this regard, Osment is spectacular: his performance in my opinion surpasses his Oscar-nominated one in "The Sixth Sense." There were moments when I looked at his eyes, his facial expressions, and I sensed an adult level of understanding and depth. Perhaps no child actor is better than Osment at acting creepy without being cute, as in one early scene when he startles his family with oddly forced laughter that doesn't seem to come with the appropriate emotions. He is playing a character who's supposed to pass for a child while not really being a child, and we slowly realize that he is in fact an alien intelligence with his own perspective and goals. Unlike a real child, he is not in the process of forming an identity. He already has one, and his only task is to fulfill his set desires and instincts, including his unbreakable attachment to his "mother" (Frances O'Connor) whom he is preprogrammed to love.

This setup is not very conducive to melodrama, yet that's much of what we get throughout the film, which tries to cast itself as a modern reinterpretation of "Pinocchio." Since Osment's character is not a real boy, we can never relate to him as one. His emotions are as artificial as his intelligence, and no enchantment or anything else will turn him into a real boy, because he simply isn't one. Yet the movie tries to manipulate our emotions so that we do see him as more human than he actually is. This approach leads the film to lose its focus in the second half and put forth one of the more perplexing and unsatisfying endings I've seen in a long time. I don't mind whether a film ends happily or sadly, but it should not try to force a weak solution to a hopeless situation, just to gain a few moments of cheap sentiment.

AI is inspired by British science fiction writer, Brian Aldiss short story 'Supertoys Last All Summer Long.' It was a project initiated by Stanley Kubrick and then taken over by Steven Spielberg who directs as well as write the screenplay. It is a mixture of Spielberg's wide eyed childlike wonder from his ET era with Kubrick's cold gaze of adulthood. It is a modern version of Pinocchio.

The film is set in a future where the ice caps have melted and eradicated the coastline. Robots of increasing sophistication have become part of the fabric of society. Professor Hobby (William Hurt) has created an android with programme to love and be more human like.

Monica and Henry Swinton (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards) have a terminally ill son and take in David (Haley Joel Osment) almost as a substitute son to love. David as he is programmed is fixated on his mother and projects his love.

When their son Martin (Jake Thomas) miraculously recovers and returns home, the new family of four becomes fractious. Martin is mean to David who cannot interact with other kids. It is not in his programming. An incident means that like a dangerous pet, he could be dangerous in the house. However Monica is not willing to send him back to the corporation where he would be presumably terminated.

Monica cares enough for David to abandon him in the woods with a Teddy Bear who is also an AI robot for companionship and wisdom (his Jiminy Cricket.) From there David befriends other robots such as Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a sex-bot on the run after being framed for murder. They evade resentful humans and journey to find the Blue Fairy whom David believes can turn him into a real boy so his mother can love him.

David is a boy who becomes accepted quickly by becoming part of a family only to find that he is not afforded their protection when he is gauded and provoked by Martin. Once in he wilds with Gigolo Joe he is living in fear in a society where robots have no rights.

Spielberg creates two sound stages for the middle of his film. Flesh Fair a gaudy, sleazy place where robots are destroyed in front of cheering humans but David pleads for his life and swings the crowd his way. Then there is Rouge City, A Vegas type place where the holographic Dr Know points them to the top of Rockefeller Center in the flood hit of Manhattan where he meets his creator, Professor Hobby.

The final act set in the submerged Coney Island which is then frozen over in an oncoming ice age until David is rescued by advanced beings.

I have to confess. I liked the ending. It bought an emotional crescendo to a flawed film. It moved me as it allows David to find he is the recipient of love and can finally grow and become human even if it is all a projection from the beings that rescued him. Without this ending, I would had found this to be a dull, uninvolving and grim experience. Humans treating robots like pets who are soon discarded once they are no longer fulfil a useful function.

I understand that this ending was part of the Kubrick draft and not added by Spielberg. Kubrick finally showed his sentimental side.