*** (out of ****)
Starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O’Connor, William Hurt, Brendan Gleeson, and Ben Kingsley.
Directed & written for the screen by Steven Spielberg, from the short story “Robot Toys Last All Summer” by Brian Aldiss.
2001 PG13
Thinking of two more disparate directors than Steven Spielberg and the late Stanley Kubrick is almost impossible. The former is all emotion and sentiment, all adventure and quick pacing, and responsible for “E.T.,” “Schindler’s List,” “Jaws,” and, my favorite, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The latter was the meditative, calculating, and detached creator of such slow-moving masterpieces as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “Barry Lyndon,” “The Shining,” and “Dr. Strangelove.” By now the story behind “A.I.” has become almost legendary: Kubrick started working on it, then decided Spielberg should finish it. Then Kubrick croaked. Wow.
I cannot stress enough what an odd pairing of enormously-talented filmmakers this is; this isn’t like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola teaming up to make a movie about Italians. “A.I.” is a fine film in which a likable character goes on a journey to find where he belongs. Spielberg excels at this kind of thing; along the way, because our hero is a robot trying to pass as a human being, there are all manner of eerie situations, and these scenes are pure Kubrick, in which dry humor arises from the creepy. What’s missing is a response to the film’s central thematic questions: should mankind create a machine that loves, and what responsibility do we have to such a gizmo? Furthermore, does the “loving” robot of “A.I.” genuinely feel affection, or is he simply mimicking emotion? Is he “faking” it just to follow a program? He can’t be blamed for faking, after all, he’s only a machine—or has he stopped being a machine and acquired some kind of soul? “A.I.” follows its protagonist on a quest to be loved by his adopted mother, as per his programming, and seems to assume at every step of the way that, yes, his love is real (even the trailer says so). But I saw nothing in the film to suggest his love was anything more than a program.
So that’s what’s wrong with “A.I.” What’s right is just about everything else. Haley Joel Osment gives an Oscar-caliber performance as the new-fangled robot boy brought home as a substitute for a comatose child. He is adorable, sincere, simple-minded, and almost maniacal in his desire to be loved. But there is no doubt he is a machine, as we are so often reminded, and when he is abandoned and begins his misguided quest for enlightenment, he serves as a fascinating protagonist because of what he understands, what he cannot understand, and what he chooses to just ignore because it is of no use to him. Along the way he “befriends” Gigolo Joe (a glorious over-the-top Jude Law), a robot designed to satisfy any woman and play Sinatra by clicking his neck. The two of them wax philosophical about mankind’s relationship to his creations while Osment searches for a way to win back his mother’s love and Law flees authorities that believe he’s gone haywire.
Their journey takes them through several startling locations, including a flooded metropolis and a neon-drenched city of decadence, all visualized with stunning art direction. “A.I.’s” most disturbing scenes find them on the run with other robots, some of them so decrepit as to look cadaverous. Some of these scenes border on the touching, including the robot nanny telling Osment not to be afraid, while other incidents are simply excessive, such as the robot-hunters riding motorcycles with lion’s heads on them.
Some viewers may object to the final act of “Artificial Intelligence,” which I will not discuss, save to say that I found it an intriguing ending to Osment’s journey. More than the rest of the film, however, this final act almost veered toward addressing the dilemma of creator-creation. Almost. The ending ultimately did not answer “A.I.’s” own question, as if Spielberg could not bring himself to admit that anything could fake love. I was satisfied with “A.I.” as a character’s journey, featuring interesting people, interesting ideas, and interesting places, but I think the late Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a larger statement. “A.I.” is like an extremely well-written, interesting essay written on the wrong subject.
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night