A.I.: Künstliche Intelligenz

I loved this film. It isn't one of the greatest films ever made, but it's a personal favorite of mine. I cried at the two sad points, I laughed at the mannerisms of Gigalo Joe and Teddy, the super-toy, my heart pumped faster at the action, suspense, and horror, but overall, I really enjoyed the film on a whole. I didn't find an ounce of it boring at all. It's practically the same as observing an extraordinary life and extraordinary tale of a boy who just wants his mommy. But the boy is not a boy, and rather a robot. But the way he acts can pass for a human any day.

The look of the film was dazzling and amazing. From the facilities in the underwater Manhatten, to the curvy, sensual architecture of Rouge City. I really felt as if I were really going along for a great ride and once I stepped out of the theater, I wanted more.

The film is from Steven Spielberg based on Brian Aldiss' short story, "Super-toys Last All Summer Long" which was doctored up by Stanley Kubrick. The film is a tribute to the legendary filmaker, but it is not his film, but rather Spielberg's. Sure it sometimes tries to mimic his styles, but that's practically the same as a filmmaker paying homage to a great. It's more or less the same as somebody making his adaptation of a novel or maybe graphic novel, since Kubrick supplied some of his artwork through designs. The story is Kubrick's, but the film is Spielberg's.

Although it may seem ridiculous to some at some points, it's a future, not THE future, but a rendition of it and somethings may happen in THIS future that may seem unrealistic. The film has a great score, but it just doesn't stand out like some of John Williams's other scores. The end could be considered a homage to Spielberg's "Close Encounters Of the Third Kind" or it could be something different, something more along the lines of the film's title, Artificial Intelligence, but only a far more advanced form of it.

The acting in this film is great along with the emotions, visions, humor, and fright. I found this film to be extraordinarily superb, but whether you think it's as good, is up to you.

I saw A.I. on the first night it ran here and I must say I was disappointed in the size of the audience. How strange to see so few people show up for a Spielberg film. This film did not enjoy the normal hype that most of Spielberg's films enjoy, I think I know why. Lack of product placement. They're may have been some somewhere but I didn't see them. A.I.'s story line and flawless visual effects reflect what I can only describe as the meeting of two great film makers. Kubrick (who started work on the project after he read the Aldiss book in '83),and Steven Spielberg who's long list of intelligent blockbusters made him the perfect person to bring this story to the screen. I could, I believe see the story boards and concepts Kubrick developed and I could also see the sensitivity that Spielberg added to scenes and characters. These two things are not entirely separate in good Science Fiction. All good science fiction has some human sensitivity in it otherwise it would just be a horror film. The script reflects some of the darkness and coldness that sometimes underlies each character human and machine, there is no fear of this in the story. This darkness draws us on in the story.

The visual effects are stunning and come darn close to genius. The story line takes us in and the visuals make it almost real.

I wish I had Mr. Mannings grip of syntax, but all in all at the end of the day it's good science fiction and a good story too. I beleve that Stanley Kubrick's choice of asking Steven Spielberg to make this film was the kind of genius that Kubrick showed in all his work. It is a tribute to both men that they saw a vision of something and worked toward it's creation. I think they came to a great place in film making.

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.

I was 13-14 when I watched this movie. It's a long movie if I recall it correctly. I was so moved by it's theme, so I watched it all. I had strong feelings of sadness and sympathy towards little robot David that wanted to be a real child and to have a mom to love him. And that little bear ... I cried during some scenes. I don't think I cried that much at any movie like at this one. Even though it's a Sci-Fi movie it has a lot of emotions. I have never watched it again since then. It'll be too hard for me P.S I don't get how some people can rate this incredible movie with an 1 ? like why ? Of course it's not a perfect movie, but sometimes it doesn't have to be. It matters your feelings about it, because this movie is that deep. 10/10

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.