geoff-71
Joined Jul 2001
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geoff-71's rating
Notwithstanding the two leads (Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker) constantly overacting, the primary flaw in this show is the unpleasantness of the father, Ben Harper. He hates his wife, children, grandchild, patients and everyone around him, and continually projects a desire to kill himself and/or everyone else.
This comes not from a sort of amusing world-weariness that might arise from raising three children, and, in Ben Harper's case, still being a dentist at age 50. On the contrary, the character is aggressive, abusive and narcissistic.
The other characters aren't very amusing either. The wife ignores the children, living in a fantasy world where she is a perfect wife and has a perfect husband. The entire family hates her cooking and tells her at every opportunity. The elder son, Nick, is desperate for love and concocts endless wild schemes to attract his father's attention, and most likely has a form of depression or bipolar disorder. The younger son couldn't care less what happens to the rest of them.
While unpleasant characters in sitcoms are not new (cf Married with Children, Simpsons), the fact that this show presents such a bastard, who has ruined his family with his self-centred and belligerent behaviour, and wraps it up in a twee, 'hilarious-dysfunctional-family' sitcom is quite disturbing.
The only way this show is worth watching is to blank out everyone except Kris Marshall as Nick and enjoy his antics without worrying about the dark underbelly of life in the Harper household.
This comes not from a sort of amusing world-weariness that might arise from raising three children, and, in Ben Harper's case, still being a dentist at age 50. On the contrary, the character is aggressive, abusive and narcissistic.
The other characters aren't very amusing either. The wife ignores the children, living in a fantasy world where she is a perfect wife and has a perfect husband. The entire family hates her cooking and tells her at every opportunity. The elder son, Nick, is desperate for love and concocts endless wild schemes to attract his father's attention, and most likely has a form of depression or bipolar disorder. The younger son couldn't care less what happens to the rest of them.
While unpleasant characters in sitcoms are not new (cf Married with Children, Simpsons), the fact that this show presents such a bastard, who has ruined his family with his self-centred and belligerent behaviour, and wraps it up in a twee, 'hilarious-dysfunctional-family' sitcom is quite disturbing.
The only way this show is worth watching is to blank out everyone except Kris Marshall as Nick and enjoy his antics without worrying about the dark underbelly of life in the Harper household.
Another alleged spinoff from "The Bill", since the first episode arcs off from the murder of Sgt Boyden. They solve the crime in the first episode, despite the fact that "The Bill" had been carefully cultivating several suspects over several episodes. In the end their lengthy and complicated setups came to nothing and all the anticipation and mystery evaporates immediately. And for some reason it takes about six officers to solve a pretty obvious crime.
What's left? Five more pedestrian police drama episodes where the murderer always ends up being the first person you thought it was, over-produced and over-acted, in typical "quality British crime drama" fashion. "Burnside", the previous spinoff, was likewise a pretty ordinary set of police dramas with a character called Frank Burnside inserted. In "M.I.T." they could have at least used DC Duncan Lennox (wonderful George Rossi), since that character now works for MIT.
At the end of the day, the whole affair is obviously a fairly cynical attempt to build a franchise from "The Bill" by inserting a few cameos in the first episode. The fact that this show isn't continuing probably tells you a fair bit.
What's left? Five more pedestrian police drama episodes where the murderer always ends up being the first person you thought it was, over-produced and over-acted, in typical "quality British crime drama" fashion. "Burnside", the previous spinoff, was likewise a pretty ordinary set of police dramas with a character called Frank Burnside inserted. In "M.I.T." they could have at least used DC Duncan Lennox (wonderful George Rossi), since that character now works for MIT.
At the end of the day, the whole affair is obviously a fairly cynical attempt to build a franchise from "The Bill" by inserting a few cameos in the first episode. The fact that this show isn't continuing probably tells you a fair bit.
Although you wouldn't realise it without being told, you can see in hindsight that this is a former project of Stanley Kubrick: the first act is very stark and sterile, the second act is downright bizarre and the third act seems to have nothing to do with the rest of it. A.I. also inherits Kubrick's knack for taking simple (albeit sophisticated) ideas and filling the corresponding motion picture with irrelevant sequences that are victories of style over substance. This isn't a bad thing, and when you're a genius and an artist like Kubrick you can pull it off.
Spielberg is a genius and an artist also, but only relative to the rest of Hollywood, so it doesn't get him as far.
You can also tell that it's been tailored for American audiences: A.I. features long monologues by characters to explain what is happening, additional narration by Ben Kingsley for the *really* stupid people and even the title had to be "Artificial Intelligence", not "A.I." so nobody would (apparently) confuse it with A1 BBQ sauce.
The explanation of everything is what spoils A.I., otherwise bordering on masterpiece. Going into the film we already know the boy is a robot so the first ten minutes of William Hurt explaining this is redundant. In fact the film might have been more compelling if this were not known to the audience for a while. Also unneeded is the narration about the world flooding and the limitation on children as these are shown later.
The useless commentary continues. The bear explains in great detail how it came across the mother's hair (did we forget?), the aliens/machines describe how they can recreate people from DNA (duh) and the narrator explains that David finally gets to sleep, which we can see happening at the time it is being explained. And why go to the trouble of explaining the mother can only live for a day? Yada yada yada, blah blah blah, there is too much talk!!!!!
Can you imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey if the creators of the Monolith explained everything to Dave Bowman at the end?
In fact, William Hurt's entire role is totally unnecessary. You could remove it and the utterly bizarre Dr Know sequence (which leads our heroes to the flooded Manhattan and then waiting Doctor Hurt) and nobody would notice. Almost certainly the Meryl Streep bit could be trimmed if not excised altogether.
Steven Spielberg has made more films than me and is regarded (rightly) as a genius by more people than me. But seriously, this film needs some edits. Paraphrasing Quentin Tarantino, film-making is knowing what to remove, no matter how cool it is or how much you might like it. Unfortunately we're not likely to get a revised version of A.I. because, to my knowledge, Spielberg is not taken to re-editing his films after the event with the exception of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and now that the DVD is out, the most logical time for a new edit is past.
Ironically Spielberg's own Close Encounters was short on narrative and the overall motives of the aliens remains a mystery. Films like Blade Runner and 2001 (which A.I. borrow a lot from), present the world as it is and the audience can infer how it came to be so. The film-makers invite the audience to consider what is not shown on screen.
What A.I. shows is that film producers still do not understand their audiences. Most of the really great or really profitable films were not contrived that way - they were expressions of the film-maker's vision and a large number of people enjoyed the experience. 2001, Star Wars and the original Star Trek TV series were made in spite of commercial considerations and they are now billion-dollar industries and/or shining lights of the artform. With A.I. I can imagine the producers asking Spielberg to add the opening and closing narrations because they felt the audience would not otherwise understand. Unfortunately, it's created a picture with no mystery and no wonder; everything is explained in detail so you can get to the end of the story and not think any further about it.
Spielberg is a genius and an artist also, but only relative to the rest of Hollywood, so it doesn't get him as far.
You can also tell that it's been tailored for American audiences: A.I. features long monologues by characters to explain what is happening, additional narration by Ben Kingsley for the *really* stupid people and even the title had to be "Artificial Intelligence", not "A.I." so nobody would (apparently) confuse it with A1 BBQ sauce.
The explanation of everything is what spoils A.I., otherwise bordering on masterpiece. Going into the film we already know the boy is a robot so the first ten minutes of William Hurt explaining this is redundant. In fact the film might have been more compelling if this were not known to the audience for a while. Also unneeded is the narration about the world flooding and the limitation on children as these are shown later.
The useless commentary continues. The bear explains in great detail how it came across the mother's hair (did we forget?), the aliens/machines describe how they can recreate people from DNA (duh) and the narrator explains that David finally gets to sleep, which we can see happening at the time it is being explained. And why go to the trouble of explaining the mother can only live for a day? Yada yada yada, blah blah blah, there is too much talk!!!!!
Can you imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey if the creators of the Monolith explained everything to Dave Bowman at the end?
In fact, William Hurt's entire role is totally unnecessary. You could remove it and the utterly bizarre Dr Know sequence (which leads our heroes to the flooded Manhattan and then waiting Doctor Hurt) and nobody would notice. Almost certainly the Meryl Streep bit could be trimmed if not excised altogether.
Steven Spielberg has made more films than me and is regarded (rightly) as a genius by more people than me. But seriously, this film needs some edits. Paraphrasing Quentin Tarantino, film-making is knowing what to remove, no matter how cool it is or how much you might like it. Unfortunately we're not likely to get a revised version of A.I. because, to my knowledge, Spielberg is not taken to re-editing his films after the event with the exception of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and now that the DVD is out, the most logical time for a new edit is past.
Ironically Spielberg's own Close Encounters was short on narrative and the overall motives of the aliens remains a mystery. Films like Blade Runner and 2001 (which A.I. borrow a lot from), present the world as it is and the audience can infer how it came to be so. The film-makers invite the audience to consider what is not shown on screen.
What A.I. shows is that film producers still do not understand their audiences. Most of the really great or really profitable films were not contrived that way - they were expressions of the film-maker's vision and a large number of people enjoyed the experience. 2001, Star Wars and the original Star Trek TV series were made in spite of commercial considerations and they are now billion-dollar industries and/or shining lights of the artform. With A.I. I can imagine the producers asking Spielberg to add the opening and closing narrations because they felt the audience would not otherwise understand. Unfortunately, it's created a picture with no mystery and no wonder; everything is explained in detail so you can get to the end of the story and not think any further about it.