A.I.: Inteligência Artificial

This was a horrible, horrible movie. A big, incoherent, pointless exercise in the typical Spielbergian club-you-over-the-head-until-you-get-it style that has absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever. Even the special effects are a waste, adding nothing to the plot and serving only as a place to dump millions of dollars where a few would have done just fine. Does it have a point of view? Who knows? The story is as disjointed as a road map of Afghanistan. Does it have humor, charm, pathos, insight--the few things, at least, you think you can count on from Steven Spielberg? No, no, no, no. Does it have a keen insight, a cold, dispassionate worldview, straightforward emotions, economy of action, like most of Kubrick's films? Uh, no, again.

This film is simply miserable. A hateful, ill-conceived, pointless, overblown, fragmented, shrill, poorly-executed disaster of a film that should serve as a cautionary tale to thousands of wanna-be filmmakers when they wonder if success is something that can be maintained after thirty years in the business. A disaster and a colossal disappointment, from beginning to end.

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

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.

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.

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.