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A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Widescreen Special Edition)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Widescreen Special Edition)

List Price: $12.99
Your Price: $9.09
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't waste your time and money!
Review: I am one of those moviewatchers that is usually VERY easy to please. Sit me down in a chair, start up the movie, and I am lost in another world for the next couple of hours. But after the first 45 minutes or so of A.I., I was jolted back into reality- it was way too far-fetched to be taken seriously, way too long to keep my interest, and the script was at times so corny that I had to control myself not to snicker. The field of Artificial Intelligence is a very interesting one that is rapidly becoming a part of our everyday lives, but this movie did it very little justice. Sorry, Steve.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not for Kids!
Review: This movie was technically great. I aggree with most people the ending of the movie was too much.

Why I am really upset with this movie is that it was constantly marketed to young crowds including kids with its deceptive PG-13 rating. The very grown up themes and scenes in the Sin City of the future were very disappointing coming from Speilberg. I would not take my 16 year old let alone younger kids.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: One of the worst films ever.
Review: We decided to buddle the family off to see AI for a July 4th fun movie. Boy, were we wrong! Haley Joel Osment delivers another great performance, and Jude Law is fabulous as well. Unfortunately, they were required to muddle through what appears to be a cobbled-together script. Multiple people, all with different ideas, glued parts of their stories together with no thought given to continuity or storyline. Speilberg took Kubrick's story and ruined it.

This film started out dismal and depressing and went straight downhill from there. If you could have felt something for any of the characters it would have been pity, but you could not come to care about anyone in this film. Then at one scene change we thought the projectionist must have put on the wrong reel. How could this be the same film ... the same ideas? I had the same thoughts as another reviewer - shades of Mad Max! It got more dismal and depressing, adding in bad and stupid to the description.

Finally you thought it was coming to an anti-climatic end, and zing, we thought the projectionist stuck on another different reel again! Here, at the end, the film becomes so totally unbelievable and disjointed that we were completely baffled. We walked out cursing ourselves for wasting the afternoon and our money to see this drivel. I see many people giving this an artsy-film thumbs-up five-stars, but if you want entertainment, stay away!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A.I. ABSOLUTE INFAMY
Review: The following scathing review has more to do with a conspiracy theory that i know many of you out there wouldn't find so hard to believe, especially those of you who really know about filmmaking.The movie A.I. represents another stain on the artistic legacy & memory of Kubrick, which started with the "doctoring" that EYES WIDE SHUT got shortly after his passing, perpetrated by an arrogant, greedy, pretentious & merciless Hollywood. EYES was quickly padded together & optically censored (something Kubrick would've NEVER stood for, remember this was the same director who took years to choose to do a movie, shoot & post-produce it & even have final say in how it would be presented to the public) & yet we were fed stories by the studio machine about his "approval" of the final, disjointed product.In a nutshell, it was tampered with. Now we have Spielberg claiming that Kubrick wanted him to direct A.I., a project that Kubrick had developed as early as the late 60's. Spielberg IS a genius filmmaker. He's a consummate storyteller, his content is syrupy & often manipulative & idealized, very popular with the masses. Kubrick? All i need to say is: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Spielberg should've just made A.I. as a total Spielbergian flick. Instead, he DARED to APE Stanley during several parts of the film, including the soon-to-be infamous insufferable last 25 min. when he tries to outdo the conclusion of 2001 A SPACE ODDYSEY by way of that other mediocre CONTACT film with Jodie Foster & starring aliens who look like tacky fashion magazine outlines. A.I. tries to be Pinocchio, OZ, BLADE RUNNER, even SCHINDLER'S LIST but the result is a stale puree. The final act of the movie is filled with absolute mumbo-jumbo & STILL Spielberg ends it all up his way, very tearjerky & ripping off his own EMPIRE OF THE SUN. It's as if, after having his uncompleted, certainly unassembled EYES WIDE SHUT released by the studio under the pretense that this is what he wanted all of us to see, now we have Spielberg's used one of Kubrick's ideas, bodysnatched his style & trampled on it. Want proof? Go see this uneven mess. Bring a pillow.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Stunning-moving-Spielberg at his greatest!
Review: I saw this film twice now and I am still totally moved by the story and the graphics. He takes you to a place not here or now and I can't help but love David and his Teddy. I cry for his plight and struggle to become "real" in his struggle to be loved. The bold tones of a frigthening future that we very well may be headed for always present, giving us warning. I am perplexed by those who trash this movie. I can see only the work of a genius. Spielberg has never yet let me down. If you gave 10 stars, this would get 11!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Complete waste of time
Review: This was quite possibly the most disappointing experience I've ever had at the movies. I'm a big fan of both Spielberg and Kubrick, but combining the two has led to one of the greatest cinematic failures I've ever witnessed. Spielberg has basically attempted to cross the sappy sentimentality of ET with the cold, harsh worldview of A Clockwork Orange. It is a lost cause, and there is no possible way such a combination could ever work. Should we sympathize with the main character or view him as an artificial being with no real emotions? By the time Spielberg gets around to answering that question, it is impossible to care anymore. Further, the answer he provides goes completely against the logic that the film has established. The movie is a train wreck and a boring one at that. Add on one of the worst endings I have ever seen in any movie, and you've got a movie that neither of these great directors should be associated with. Stay away...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a truly provocative film
Review: ****1/2 "Isn't that why God created Adam in the first place? So He would have somebody who would love Him?"

These words, or words similar to them, form the fade out for the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg's provocative new film "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," based on a short story by Brian Aldiss entitled "Supertoys Last All Summer Long." The speaker of these words is Professor Allen Hobby who has just announced to a roomful of astonished colleagues that he has managed to construct a robot capable of feeling true love. Thus begins Spielberg's fable of a young "boy"'s search for that which we humans hold so dear.

Certainly, Hobby's statement has the ring of truth about it. Why, after all, do we choose to become parents? Is it strictly a decision driven by purely altruistic motives or does a part of us crave having another individual who will lavish affection and devotion upon us unconditionally? (This may be to a large extent why we own and raise pets as well). Something in our basic human nature needs the affirmation we get when others love us. But what happens when, as in the future world depicted in this film, the earth's resources have become so strained that having real children made of flesh and blood only beings the species closer to the edge of extinction? Who will be there to love us then? Thus, we have the perfect setup for the creation of artificial life capable of returning that love we so desperately need to feel.

Like most science fiction films that deal with the moral complexities raised by a technology that seems to be outpacing mankind's ability to cope with it, "A.I." could be read as a cautionary tale. But it is really something much deeper than that. It is an exploration of what love truly is, particularly that special kind of love that occurs only between a parent (or, more specifically, a mother) and a child. I imagine that this film will strike deep chords within those members of the audience who have felt somehow deprived of the love either of a parent or a child. As such, the film has almost therapeutic value. So many movies toss the idea of "love" around so casually that it is something of a revelation to see a film that actually makes it the subject upon which its entire being is based.

Haley Joel Osment plays David, the prototype model of the "love" child. David finds himself adopted by the Swinton family, partly as a "replacement" for their real child who lies dying in a hospital. Monica is at first reluctant to activate David's love mechanism, but eventually she does, yet when her own child makes a miraculous recovery, she somehow finds herself holding back from committing her love completely to David. David thus becomes obsessed with winning his mother's love, an obsession that takes him on an odyssey with another robot, a gigolo named Joe (Jude Law), and an animated toy bear. Inspired by the story "Pinocchio," David goes on a journey in search of the Blue Fairy, whom he naively believes will be able to magically change him into a real boy, thereby allowing his mother to love him fully and completely. Some there are who see parallels between this film and other Spielberg works such as "E.T." and "Close Encounters" (not to mention Kubrick's "2001" in the final act) and there are certainly echoes of those films to be found scattered throughout. But in many ways, though the film works as a conscious reenactment of the "Pinocchio" story, it really seems like a futuristic version of "The Wizard of Oz," with a collection of misfits journeying to find the only force capable of making them whole and complete.

Because this film was originally begun by the late Stanley Kubrick, one can feel his presence hovering over the project, particularly in the austere, almost antiseptic, tone and pacing. Yet, with the heavy emphasis on the love theme, Spielberg is able to bring his own unique warmth to the proceedings as well. It turns out to be an effective blending of styles, with the latter keeping the film from becoming too cold and clinical and the former keeping it from becoming too gooey and sentimental. There is a horrific scene in the middle of the film in which we see many of these lifelike robots destroyed in a large scale arena "Flesh Fest" that seems to be a futuristic alternative to the gladiatorial contests and public executions that have served to satisfy humanity's bloodlust throughout its long, ignoble history. Only now, the people can rationalize the sadism away by telling themselves that these victims are not "real."

Much has been made by critics of the film of the seeming disjointedness of the movie's structure, about how it seems to break off into separate pieces and about how it seems to suffer from too many climaxes and false endings. I disagree. I was with the story all the way through to the end, pulled along by the sheer audacious vision and imagination that inform the film. For instance, our trio's trip to an abandoned and flooded New York City (caused by the melting of the polar ice caps as a result of global warming) is a stylistic triumph. The art direction in this sequence is simply phenomenal. Yet, for all its technical perfections, "A.I." never loses sight of its goal, which is to chronicle this one child's search for the greatest of all human needs - love.

The acting on the part of the entire cast is superb, but special note must, of course, be made of Haley Joel Osment. This riveting co-star of "The Sixth Sense" delivers a performance so filled with wonder, feeling and emotion that we never doubt for a second that he is indeed an individual capable of both giving and eliciting love on the deepest level. This extraordinary young actor creates an indelible impression in the viewer's heart and mind. So does Frances O'Connor as the "mother" struggling between wanting to give her complete love to this unique presence in her life and sensing that there is something not quite real or right about it all.

Most directors working with this material would probably have had the child running amuck and causing havoc for all those presumptuous people who dared to play God and create "life." In short, in less capable hands, "A.I." could easily have degenerated into yet another sci-fi horror story. Instead, Spielberg, ever the maturing artist, has seen fit to provide us with that rarest of cinematic creatures - a summer film that challenges the mind and opens up new possibilities of what films can do and be.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good, I hope they have alternate endings on the DVD.
Review: I went and saw AI, and I thought it was a very intriguing film, and it definately fits into my top 15 movies. This movie has alot of emotion and Osment did a really great job. The move kept my attention, I found it intriguing of what happened to NYC. I thought the end of the movie was a little dumb, but it didnt ruin the film completely. All in all, a good futuristic film.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: a weak effort
Review: Unfortunately, what could have been a truly great film turns out to be a very mediocre, melodramatic, and commercialized flick. Here is the premise: in the future the global warming results in great floods that devour many coastal cities including NY. At the same time science gets to the point that it can create robots indistinguishable in their physical appearance from humans, however lacking the capacity to experience emotions. An ambitious scientist creates a child-robot David that is adopted by a wealthy young couple whose son has been in a coma. David is a bold experiment, the first of a kind in a sense that supposedly he can love. Nonetheless, the experiment goes wrong when the couple's real son wakes up from a coma and David is disposed off. The rest of the movie depicts David's quest to become a real boy and earn his foster mom's love. This plotline is essentially parallel to Pinocchio.

I really expected a lot from this movie. After all it brings up a very important ethical question: what kind of moral responsibility we humans have for our creations? This question nowadays is suddenly becoming more and more practical, since the first cloning of the human DNA is unquestionably imminent. So, what exactly constitutes a person? Can a machine experience emotions? Does it make it a person if it does? Are we allowed to destroy such machine even if we created it, or do our usual moral obligations (don't kill ) expand onto it as well? All those questions - this is really why I was looking forward to seeing in the movie.

However, instead of exploring these possibilities the film plunges into an unbelievably cheesy, typical-for-Hollywood, mindless, overemotional B.S. Aliens, global flood, fantasy physics - why the heck did the makers of this film need all that??? It is completely irrelevant to the central issues of the plot. What is worse, the movie essentially has two different endings pasted one after another. Very disappointing!!!

Overall, the movie might be worth watching after all, since it does make you think about all those questions that I brought up before. The special effects are impressive and the kid's acting is superb. However, I don't see any necessity to waste money and see it in the theaters - wait until it comes out on DVD or VHS.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Script Problems
Review: Although excellent performances from the cast, I had several problems with the script and the premise. Firstly, the notion that David would have to be destroyed after imprinting is completely pointless and inaccurate in the reality of re-programmable computers. That was glaring nonsense one. The second problem was the lengthy quest for the Blue Fairy, even after David is told that it doesn't exist. An obsessive-compulsive robot? This is the point where the script really falters, because there are so many places it could have gone that would have been interesting, such as making a robotic mom to love David... What is at issue is whether a conscious computer can have a soul. The ... at the end where they make a mom from DNA that can only last a day - again, poor logic to justify pulling emotional strings. Although the future robots were excellent, the point that they were conscious and able to love was not developed enough. In fact, why is it not ok to love unconditionally without being loved back?

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