Review of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) by Gregory G — 16 Apr 2014

A collaboration between two of the biggest filmmakers of the past half century, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, "AI: Artificial Intelligence" sounded like a good idea but the end result is a disaster.

Kubrick had discussed the project with Spielberg over the years even showing him storyboards. After Kubrick's death, Spielberg wrote a script for "AI" based on their collaborative efforts while inputting his own take on the material.

In the simplest terms, this is a retelling of "Pinocchio" set in a dystopian future where a boy robot (Haley Joel Osment) wants to be real to earn the love of his adoptive human mother. Despite similar gifts for visual imagery, Spielberg and Kubrick seemingly have diametrically opposed sensibilities and so the movie is divided in spirit.

"AI" has passages that are as dark as anything Spielberg has ever done but it contains the worst elements of both filmmakers - the misanthropy of Kubrick and sentimentality of Spielberg. The movie has an earlier resolution that works but Spielberg tacks on a twenty minute coda set 2000 years later that is clearly meant to be an homage to "2001".

The sequence is so unbearably cloying that it throws the audience out of the picture. It causes us to feel hostile towards the movie so that everything else that came before feels irrelevant. Jude Law as a robot gigolo, William Hurt, and Frances O'Connor also star.

Impressive cinematography by Janusz Kaminski and score by John Williams. Voice cameos by Robin Williams, Meryl Streep, Chris Rock.