AmateurMovieReviews.com

By Simon Woodhouse

Movies set in the near future went through a bit of a renaissance a few years ago. And rather interestingly, they all looked very similar. Minority Report, I Robot, and this film, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, have a shared vision of the future. It's a place where technology is king, almost to a point where it seems as though people are only there to act as a background detail. These films have very little in the way of a soul, and are really just effects-driven, CGI workouts that create a bit of instant hype but quickly disappear off the radar.

A.I. tries to put a bit of humanity back into the near future scene, but it's a forced, fake sort of sentiment that's no more real than the CGI effects present in much of the film.

In years gone by, Sci-Fi movies used to start with a bit of scrolling text that explained the back plot. Nowadays audiences don't seem to be able to cope with that sort of thing, so it's a voice over that delivers the necessary set up information. A.I. is no exception to this rule. The movie begins with a fatherly narrator explaining how the Earth's climate has been shafted, most of the planet flooded and strict population controls put in place to stop everyone starving to death. But robots, who don't require food to function, are deemed a necessary part of society. This basic premise presents what seems like a continuity error. If the planet has been flooded and there's starvation due to over population, that means there are more than enough people to keep the modern society functioning, so what are the robots needed for? Perhaps it's best just to ignore these sorts of plot holes, and instead sit back and enjoy the movie.

Wholesome married couple Henry (Sam Robards) and Monica (Frances O'Connor), have got it all - lovely house, nice car, plenty of cash. But they still require our sympathy because their young son is in what seems like a permanent coma, the result of his involvement in an accident. Monica is pining for the boy, so Henry gets her a humanoid robotic replacement called David (Haley Joel Osment). He's a prototype whose makers have tried to programme him to feel love, the consequence of which causes him to develop an over-bearing attachment to Monica. When family unity is threatened, Monica realizes David has to go. But if she returns him to the manufacturers he'll be scrapped, and because she does feel something for him she doesn't want that to happen. She works out a compromise, which leads to the film's first really powerful scene. However, because David and Monica are both actually quite irritating characters, I took some pleasure in seeing them suffer (I know, I'm a horrible person).

This is where the film falls down. It serves up doses of sickly sweet sentiment that are just too much to swallow. Had the characters been a little more down to earth and easier to identify with, then I'd have felt what they felt. As it is, I can't feel sympathy for Monica when her life is so perfect, and David is the typical Hollywood robot creation - the mechanical person struggling to understand emotions (think of Data from Star Trek, only more irritating).

Having been rejected by his 'mother', David thinks if he becomes a real boy Monica will love him. This delusion has arisen from Monica's reading of Pinocchio to David as a bedtime story, and subsequently the 'boy' thinks if he can find the Blue Fairy (a character from the book) he'll be turned into a real child. In order to complete this quest he joins up with a robot called Joe (Jude Law). But as neither of them have much idea about the real world, they don't realize the Blue Fairy is just a character in a story. The film plods along on this rather naive storyline, stringing out the ups and downs of David and Joe for over two hours. It's a tedious journey, punctured at every possible moment by bouts of stomach churning sentiment that are so over the top they're impossible to take seriously. And just when you think it can't get any worse, the final few scenes reach new depths of saccharin sickliness.

Originally a long time project of Stanley Kubrick, the movie was taken up by Steven Spielberg after Kubrick's death. This is probably where all the sugar sweet sentiment comes from. I find it hard to believe that Kubrick, the man who bought us A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, would have been party to a film such as this. Perhaps if there'd been a different actor in the role of David, the movie might have been a bit more watch-able. Haley Joel Osment certainly can act, but his benign robot expression becomes irritating very quickly. The script is probably to blame for Frances O'Connor's performance, as it seems to require her to jump from one hysterical emotion to the next, with hardly a pause for breath in between. The only really decent bit of acting comes from Jude Law, but even though his character starts off interestingly enough, it's soon buried beneath an avalanche of schmaltz.

But having said all this, A.I. does sit well in the company of its peers. What I mean is, it's no better or worse than Minority Report (another Spielberg film) and I Robot. So not only do they share a common vision of the future, but they're all equally as bad when it comes to plot, acting and script.