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A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Widescreen Special Edition)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Widescreen Special Edition)

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Misunderstood Ending
Review: So many reviews both positive and negative, so just a few words.

WARNING POTENTIAL SPOILER

The beings at the end of the movie are not aliens they are highly advanced robots searching, or more specifically digging, for information about those extinct creatures that indirectly created them,... human beings. Those of you who thought they were aliens and that the ending was happy missed all the symbolism and meaning in the movie. Rewatch the movie and you will see. If robots at the end 5 stars, if aliens 1 star,.... likely explains much of the wide variety of ratings.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Worst Movie I've Ever Seen
Review: The movie never ends. I saw this movie in the theater, and I want my money back. After about 3 hours of boring nothingness, I finally walked out. I had a very hard time staying awake through this movie. Speilberg just didn't know when to end it! There were so many parts when I thought the movie should have been over, because nothing was happening, but no. It went on and on and on.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nicely done
Review: A good movie and a good DVD treatment. I won't get into why I think this movie's underrated, except to say . . . well, I liked it. Except for the last 30 minutes. And the beauty of it is, now I can just press the stop button when I want to.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Thanks, Spielburg!
Review: Wow! I had the worst case of insomnia you could imagine. I decided instead of surfing the web for countless hours I would pay a visit to Blockbuster. After about 30 minutes of watching this, I finally nodded off for the first time in a week. Thank you so much! I slept so well that I had my parents buy it for me. After that, whenever I want to sleep, I just pop this DVD in the DVD player, and it's off to dreamland for me! I think this should be a perscription drug. Thank you Steven Spielburg! This movie was the movie of my dreams.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What Constitutes Life - Could You Love A Baby Robot?
Review: In Short:
Pros:
1: Solid and unique storyline revolves around social elements with good beginning and end and no prolonged dull moments.
2: Appeal beyond strict special effects wizardry and sci-fi aspects.
3: Excellent special effects and futuristic society depiction (this movie does depict the World Trade Center Twin Towers existing far in the future).
4: A mixture of humor and serious cinema makes for a well rounded cinematic experience.
5: When it comes to PG-13 movies many modern movies are much closer to R than to PG. This movie is closer to a genuine PG-13 with scenes wholly appropriate to children without explanation while others will possibly provoke a family conversation about relationships, fairness, and parent/child love & loss.

Cons:
Nothing significant in my opinion.

One of the central elements of this movie is the question of what constitutes life? Given the ever increasing pace at which computer and other sciences are advancing some of the issues that are broached in this film may well come up in many peoples lifetimes. Sure it's not likely to be exactly as depicted but quite frankly I don't write it off completely.

I think this movie is a classic and I recommend it.

This is the story of a synthetic boy built by a future multinational as an alternative to having real children. The world is a different place in the future with global warming having significantly melted the icecaps and flooded the coastal areas and radiation causing a rise in disease and infertility. Androids are nothing new to this future society in fact they are cheaper than human beings and have largely replaced them as domestic servants and workers. Most humans are forced to live on meager stipends while an elite develops the technology that drives the world economy such as androids.

As a test subject the company building this new revolutionary product offers it to an employee's family with a son suffering from an illness for which there is no cure (he is in stasis pending a cure at the movie's start). While at first reluctant and even spooked the grieving mother eventually takes the synthetic child in to her home. The process involves imprinting the face of the mother on the boys artificial consciousness and is irreversible, once done the boy will love the mother and treat her as his mother for eternity. The boy never grows never changes he just loves his mommy in perpetuity.

Then a partial cure is found for the biological child and he is released from the futuristic hospital although still not 100% and aided by technology. Initially they keep both boys but the biological one begins to be cruel to the artificial child immediately. At the "real" boys birthday party his friends all seem to have picked up on his attitude toward his artificial sibling as being little better than a fancy talking teddy bear toy which he also owns and is cruel to (and he is the artificial child's best friend). One of the children at the party decides to cut the android to see what he does and triggers a terror reflex with both the real child and synthetic sibling going into the pool and sinking like a stone because the terrorized robot is clinging hysterically to the real boy.

This is the turning point in the movie because the mother decides to get rid of the robot boy and drives him into the woods and abandons him there. Remember that the boy is fixated on his mother figure and so begins a never-ending quest to become a real boy Pinocchio fashion. His love of his mother is absolute and does not diminish or waver despite being thrown away.

The synthetic child quickly falls into an underground world where discarded robots are hunted down for parts and destroyed by angry economically displaced humans who are generally hostile and cruel to synthetics. He begins his odyssey to become "real" with his trusty talking teddy bear at his side and the aid of a lover boy android in black synthetic leather. The comparison between the boy and the gigolo drives home that the boy is supposed to be very special because people have a hard time telling he is in fact synthetic (the robot haters throw rotting vegetables at the man who wants to destroy him because he is crying and terrified in one scene). Joe Gigolo leaves little doubt as to what he is however and he is pretty amusing.

It's an unusual movie really and the closest comparison I can think of is Bicentennial Man but I like this one better. It may be because it's a story about a child that never grows up and never stops loving. That is what is really the central aspect of his Artificial Intelligence is the love of his mother figure and the desire to win redemption in her eyes.

I recommend it for parents who would like to see a touching story and I recommend it for sci-fi fans as it is a unique movie and storyline and very different from most movies. It might be harder for younger children to understand everything but they just might surprise you too so I would say it is a movie for families.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Depressing and disappointing, not what it appears to be
Review: A.I. is disappointing on several scales. Marketing misrepresented the film by promoting shots of a laughing Haley Joel Osment but this film is filled with one depressing scene after another.

The movie attempts to be a dark, twisted retelling of the Pinocchio story, a statement about discrimination, and a story about faith and love. A.I. seems to have suffered from too many fathers. Brian Aldiss created the characters in his short short, "Supertoys Last All Summer". (Only David and Teddy remain true to his version.) Stanley Kubrick originally planned the film and abandoned it before his death and Steven Spielberg inherited the project.

Hally Joel Osment's performance as David is sincere and sophisticated but his characters flawed logic - find the blue fairy and become a "real" boy - is painful to watch.

There are plotting problems as well. Characters actions are inconsistent. The "organic" humans are inexplicably brutal to the robots, even although they were created solely for the humans enjoyment. A dense forest used as dumping ground for discarded robots contradicts the worldwide food shortages at the movie's premise. Inexplicably, a working factory exists in an tremendously altered New York City, taking the film out of the realm of science fiction and into fantasy.

The film is excessively long, with a strange, drawn out, straining-to-be-uplifting ending that doesn't really work. A.I.'s biggest disappointment is that it lacks the heart of all other Spielberg movies.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Pinnochio goes electronic
Review: Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the opening scenes occur in New Jersey? How come the Garden State is dry as a bone while New York City is almost totally submerged? Well, never mind...
The overblown plot involving the search of a "humanized" robot for his imagined Mother is too much to bear. David, played by Haley Joel Osment, is programmed to be able to feel love by his human Mother, who is forced to cast off the partly human Son when the fully human Son is resussitated.
The movie would have been better if David searched for the Monica Swinton character and not the Blue Fairy. Then the positive message would be that a Mother's Love is what makes us *truly* human. That without Love we might as well *be* mechanical. Instead we get the horribly violent scene in an arena where old robots are thrown to the lions, actually a wrecking ball if memory serves. Ofcourse it's symbolic but it's also obvious and unnecessary - just like the many typical close-ups of the child star with a vacant expression.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Kubrick is rolling in his grave
Review: As a big Kubrick fan, I was excited to see this movie. The first third of the movie was really well done (probably because it was the most Kubrikesque). The emotional complexity was really intriguing. Here you have an artificially created child who seems to exhibit human emotion, so you want to like him, yet he's just not quite human enough to really love. Haley Joel Osment exhibits dynamic acting ability as the deadpan meta boy. Very impressive.

After setting up a great premise, the movie takes a ridiculous ride that refuses to end. The focus shifts from an intriguing, intellectual film, to a futuristic chase movie. This I found to be quite boring. And just when you think the movie is about to end, it keeps going with a new weird twist, each more ludicrous than the previous. And of course it ends with the classic Spielberg ending where all the loose ends are tied up a little too nicely.

My analysis: the first hour is good Kubrick cinema, the last 90 minutes are Spielberg's hopeless attempts to imitate Kubrick. Fans of this movie like it because they think it is so intellectual, but really only the first part is. Anyone who has seen a good "intellectual" film would know this film does not belong in that category. A.I. is not worth the time, you'd be much better off watching Blade Runner or Kubrick's 2001 Space Odessey.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This Has Become My All-time Favorite!
Review: It wasn't easy, The long-standing champion is "The Big Easy", and that is one movie that is a model of filmaking perfection!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: nothing less than bloated hype with a big name behind it
Review: I will start by saying that I gave this 2 stars for the production value. I have a tendency to agree with the reviewer that said he could feel nothing for an android. Because outside the realm of compassion is reality. And realistically speaking, who cares about someone who never was or will be human. It's just a machine that is confused. I found almost all of his "Mommy Mommy" banter to be really annoying. She never was his mom to begin with. Just another store bought product. If he was meant to be human he would been born that way. Not created in a labratory. I think for the most part that sums up the whole approach to this godforsaken [film] Steven Spielberg calls a movie. Heavy handed & boring. I could go on forever about the horrible psychology behind this [poor movie]. But why bother?


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