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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
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A failure - but WHAT a failure...
Review: If Steven Spielberg were an ice-dancer, then A.I. was the triple-salco, pike and tuck with extra twirly-whirly bit. If he were a diver, then it was the often-talked about, seldom seen five-out-of-five-for-bravery three-twist tuck and swan dive.

If Speilberg were Evel Knievel, then A.I. was the Grand Canyon.

The stakes were high - if he made it, his fame would spread throughout the kingdom, and for years to come, people would speak his name is hushed tones of reverence. Like they did about Orson Welles.

But if he failed ... Well, the cost of failure was too cataclysmic to bear thinking about.

Alas, the skater ended on his backside; the diver clipped the back of his head on the springboard and re-entered horizontally and with an earsplitting rifle crack of flesh on unforgiving water; and as we watched, poor Evel dwindled Wylie Coyote-like into an undiscernable speck in the yawning chasm.

We grimace, look away and hope he is too far for the awful sound to travel.

A.I. misses its target in the most spectacular fashion. Spielberg certainly tips his hat on the way down: We have the flooded planet of Waterworld; the post apocalyptic outlaw scavengers of Mad Max; the fallen vice city of Blade-runner; weird hyper-advanced beings from Close Encounters; the familiar home recreated by the unseen alien being from the weird part at the end of 2001; and a partly submerged Statue of Liberty from (the original) Planet of the Apes. But no Rosebud!

For all this, and probably because of it, the film has no real thread: the serial scenes are almost completely disjoined; held together only by the most tenuous thread of the Pinocchio storyline, a device which is almost too Spielberg to be believed.

Then finally, just when it seems that the story might be getting somewhere, the narrative is literally suspended - frozen in ice for two millenia, if you please - only to be rescured by bunch of suspect bipedal higher beings (Robots? Aliens? Is there any difference?) who sit the robot boy down and calmly explain the point of the movie and outline its denouement to him.

This is considerate, I guess - two hours into such a maddeningly disjointed experience, you may be grateful for someone to explain, in a nutshell, what on earth is going on - but for me it was cop-out cinematography of the worst order, as if Spielberg the ice-skater knew he couldn't do the triple salco by himself and in lieu of performing it sat down and talked you through what he would have done if he could.

The result is a film which doesn't say much at all. It doesn't really get to grips with the dilemma of Artificial Intelligence (the one observation Spielberg does make he does explicitly, five minutes into the film, when a student wryly observes "it's not whether they can love, but whether we can love them back") - instead, Spielberg spends most of his energy pursuing the theme of unrequited filial love, which just isn't interesting enough to sustain any film, let alone one as long and prone to random changes in direction as this.

Many of the characters are superfluous including, for my money, the father, the son (at any rate when he revived from his coma - the poor lad was a more interesting precence when in a vegetative state!) and even cyber-gigolo Jude Law. In fact, the entire sex-bot subplot could have been jettisoned for the net gain of a more manageable viewing time and one less red-herring.

The final anomaly was that the one person in the film who made it to the end and managed to act sensibly throughout was the robot teddy-bear. Maybe this was the point, actually.

Anyhow, any film that can warrant this much verbiage from me can't be all bad, but fundamentally it misses its mark.

Down in the valley below, can I hear the faintest, muted thud?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The perfect fusion
Review: In one of A.I.'s most meaningful scenes, Gigolo Joe and David ask Dr. Know (a virtual oracle) about the blue fairy. After several unsuccessful queries, they try combining the "Flat Fact" and "Fairy Tale" categories. Dr. Know's answer is a poem that is not only the key for David's quest for the blue fairy, but the key to the film's true meaning as well: "Come away, O human child/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand/For the world's more full of weeping/than you can understand." Stanley Kubrick's work was about the struggle human beings have in controlling the beast within. He knew that, as a rule, the beast ends up showing up. On the other hand, Spielberg's films celebrate the exceptions to that rule. These are in no way mutually exclusive points of view. In fact, they are both the sides of the same coin. The best fairy tales manage to be hopeful and dark at the same time. They are simple and sweet on the surface, but complex and even terrifying underneath. A.I. is one of those tales. It's the best metaphor about the human condition ever put on film. Dig under the surface and you'll find your reward.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Should have ended after an hour!
Review: This film was entertaining for the sheer fantastical nature of the plot for the first hour, as time went on after this it became more and more tedious to watch until towards the end it became nothing short of bad. It became almost unbearable to watch towards the end and I would recommend renting this one rather than buying it as you could do better for your money.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: ài and love
Review: As a fairy-tale for kids, this movie is by far too brutal and violent, and as an entertainment for adults it is so unbelievably moronic, that I really couldn't bear it and dropped out. Bad luck for H.J. Osment, who is really not to blame for that.

What about the main topic, the question if it's possible to create robots with human feelings like love and fear, or if they only can pretend such feelings, and what would be the moral consequences? This is, of course, a rewarding theme for a good science fiction movie, but not, please, in the mantle of such a science nonsense like this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: beautifully tragic
Review: I often feel in discussing this movie with people that we didn't see the same movie. There is only one other person who I've talked to who would give it a five star rating. This movie raises some very basic fundamental issues in dealing with the possibility of one day creating artificial life that can be programmed to genuinely love. Though highly unlikely to the extent that they represent it the storey is beautiful. I think too many people get caught up in a comparison between it and pinnochio. I don't think it was meant to represent a modern day pinnochio though the reference does exist in the movie. It was simply a way for the David to understand he was not a real human and gave him the dream of becoming a real human where as pinnocchio did not wish for the blue fairy she just came to him because of a wish made by giuppetto. Indeed "if a mecha can be programmed to genuinely love a human, what responsibility do we as humans have to love it back". the first time I saw this movie I was very deeply moved and yet a bit confused. But having watched it several times since I have been able to focus on the areas which first confused me and put the whole story together so much that I consider it a true masterpeice. I'm afraid this is one movie that was severely underated by critics and people who just didn't get it. For anyone who has loved or dreamed to love this movie will touch you.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Give me back my $2
Review: I had no interest in seeing this film until I read its reviews. They ran the full length of the spectrum from outstanding to horrendous. Generally, when a film gets such a strong reaction, it is worth risking the price of admission to see it. That was not the case with A.I. This film was a real snoozer. I felt ripped off after paying only two dollars to see this film - it was that bad. I have read reviews stating that this film possessed great depth and dealt with important ethical issues. Nothing of more depth than the issues raised by your average fortune cookie could be found within this film. True, it was beautiful, but no photograph or painting exists that I wish to stare at for more than two hours. I found myself checking my watch frequently, and often wished that the film would end, only to be disappointed again and again. Still, if there were one bright spot in the film, it would be Jude Law. I found his character oddly charming and his portrail very crisp and professional.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally a TRUE Science Fiction film!
Review: A I is truly amazing, and those who have failed to get any pleasure from it only go to 'Sci Fi' films to see the latest Terminator blow up the latest tank. The originality and imagination that went into this film has made up for decades of disappointing, mindless space garbage erroneously labelled science fiction. SF exists to make us think about ourselves, and to be amazed and shocked at what we as Humans are capable of doing, and where our actions and inventions could take us. A I does this in spades. Visually stunning, great performances, and captivating from start to finish. Put me down for the dvd please!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: fairy-tale for adults
Review: If you watch this movie for the first time, you may think, oh dear, why do they play this in the evening - while the obvious target group is dreaming in their cribs yet. But after an hour you feel, there is something wrong with this superficial harmony. And so on, increasing cracks spread out all over this lovely, hearty family-toy-story. Your suspects grow - horror is near, terrible things will happen. And so it does. But don't expect the clear and the obvious. Suspense is the striking mood in this picture.
For me it's the best Spielberg - even better than schindlers list, which I saw nearly ten times. But it's boring to compare this absolute different things - in my case the (trivial but) decisive point is: I prefer colour in movies and I like SF and utopian stories.
CAUTION: Please leave your below-10-aged-kids at home to spare them that grievous experience of repudiation of a loving child by its own mother. I think particularly people who ever had the experience of losing a beloved person will become very appealed by this movie. Special Remark: if something like TEDDY will appear on the market anytime - i'm sure to be one of the first buyers. I love him.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Totally Awesome
Review: This was the sleeper of the year! Pulled at the heartstrings a little too much, but I love it! 100 !!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A good solid film.
Review: Despite many professional film critics and some movie goers' reviews, this film was truly outstanding and enjoyable. I, for one, am a big fan of both young actor, Haley Joel Osment and director, Steven Spielberg. So seeing A.I. was double the enjoyment! This is the kind of film which the Academy is probably looking into as a Best Picture nomination...I wouldn't be too surprised, either if it did happen! This film is about a young robot named David. He cannot feel. He cannot love. But he can learn a lot - fast and well. The whole film is about what the character of David goes through when he tries to "fit in" and find a place in the world. It was simply moving and touching and Osment always leaves me satisfyed with his performances. Judd Law and William Hurt are also excellent in this film, as well as the rest of the cast. Like I said before this film was very enjoyable and don't listen to those reviews - they are probably by people who don't have any good taste in movies as is! The music is stunning, too and so are the special effects. I definitely recommend that you see this film. It's beautiful and brilliant!


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