Review of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) by Juliet B — 07 Dec 2012

Saw this this afternoon on Blu-ray disc, and I liked it even more that when it was in theaters. Worth watching again, as it's a film whose dark side and message "age" well. Haley Joel Osment's performance is breathtaking, as is Mr.

Law's, as Gigilo Joe. I agree with Roger Ebert: there are flaws in the script, and maybe we never quite invest in the protagonist's plight because he is, after all, a ROBOT. (Robin Williams, in 'Centennial Man,' did a better job of eliciting my pity, but Williams can always elicit.

) What's great about A.I. is that it's so fascinating, so intriguing. I cried again. The mother-son relationship (with all its positives and negatives) is tastefully but mournfully explored. I was struck by the truth of the film, i.

E., that a boy needs a mother's love desperately. What would it be like for a robot to feel this but be abandoned by his mother? The question is at the heart of the movie. The problem is, it's not enough to carry the story.

Spielberg should have followed the parents too, seen their sorrow deepen. And while the ending, set 2000 years subsequent to the film's primary events, is startling and beautiful, it's too much to shoe-horn into such a complicated stew as what we've tasted before it.

The story should have ended in David's time, and we should have seen consequences in David's parents' lives, (and maybe a little hope, Mr. Spielberg?). But for positives, A.I. has amazingly memorable and gorgeous special effects, and a "veracity" -- it "feels" like what things should "feel" like in 50 or so years.

I loved it. Watch it again if you haven't seen it recently. It's one of the best SF films of the century. It will be remembered. It's canon, and it's Steven Spielberg's most intelligent work.