A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

No spoilers in this review - if this thread ends up discussing spoilers later (it probably will, considering the nature of this movie), I'll edit and note it in the thread title.

SUMMARY

David (Haley Joel Osment), a robotic boy programmed to love, embarks on a quest to become a real boy so his adoptive mother will love him back.


RECOMMENDED FOR:

Those who want to see the rare sort of science fiction film that is both imaginative and meaningful.


REVIEW

After the long drought following his masterpiece Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg finally returns to the silver screen with his most ambitious film yet.

A.I. is everything that Bicentennial Man tried and failed to be: a poignant and philosophical film about love, mortality, and creation expressed through the character of a modern Pinnochio, set in a visually imaginative future environment of epic scale.

Spielberg takes a noticeable departure in the overall tone that is normally expected of him, the most dramatic paradigm shift in the nature of his work since the shatteringly powerful Schindler's List. As A.I. had its roots as Stanley Kubrick's pet project for the last twenty years of his life, Spielberg makes a definite attempt to emulate Kubrick's style in weaving an intricate character study. David's journey and development in the film are focused on tightly, though they are placed in an environment of immense macroscopy.

A.I.'s visual impact is tremendous. This is quite simply one of the most well-conceived "future Earths" ever realized on the silver screen. No excessive flying cars, no unrealistic overestimation of the effects of global warming, and all packaged in a beautiful presentation. In visual spectacle, it is the film to beat this year.

The acting is solid and convincing. Haley Joel Osment delivers his finest performance yet, embodying the character of David and becoming him. Jude Law is absolutely fantastic and charming as his sidekick Gigolo Joe, the male pleasure robot. Frances O'Connor is as motherly a figure as one can get in her role as the woman who adopts David.

The only major problems in A.I. lie in certain scientific inconsistencies and impossibilities. Without spoiling anything, let's just say that the overly long and borderline ludicrous epilogue, although deserving of praise for being successfully touching, leaves much to be desired in terms of the difference between an imaginative vision of a science-fiction future and pure fantasy. However, such apparent issues lie on the surface and can easily be explained with a figurative, less overt explanation, as in the case with Kubrickian films like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There is certainly room to improve in this film. While it is an excellent movie in terms of artistic quality, it is not a traditional "entertainment" film by any means, contrary to what is usually expected of Spielberg. The ending will continue to be one of the most disputed love-it-or-hate-it conclusions in cinema for years to come. However, none of these preclude A.I. from being a magical experience and a rare science fiction movie with both brains and creativity.