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Movie Reviews

A.I. is O.K.

Director Steven Spielberg returns to the sci-fi/fantasy genre that made him famous, but this time, it’s a story that was to be completed by the late Stanley Kubrick. This is what makes it strange: You have two great and different directors, but one having to finish the other’s work.

Though a great theme, filled with cinematic beauty, “Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)” is rather depressing and definitely not fit for small children as it mixes Spielberg’s self reflection and Kubrick’s self disturbance.

With strong thematic reference to the timeless tale of Pinocchio, the movie "A.I." is about the first machine programmed to love: an android boy named David (Haley Joel Osment), who does a remarkable job.

In the future when polar ice caps have melted and coastal cities are partially submerged in water, machines have become an important part of life for humans. Overpopulation and hunger are Earth's major concerns; couples cannot have children without government permission. Machines perform a variety of important functions as well as superficial functions, including one called Gigolo Joe, who does…well the name speaks for itself.

David was created by Cybertronics Manufacturing and adopted as a test case by an employee (Sam Robards) and his wife (Frances O'Connor), whose own terminally ill son has been cryogenically frozen until a cure can be found.

While the mother comes to accept David as their own, their son whose cure was found and the father are not. David is abandoned in the wood forced to face a growing anti-robot faction. Seeking the fairy who can make him a real boy, he finds himself on the run with another "mecha," Gigolo Joe (Jude Law).

The movie is about family, loss, mechanization, and social collapse. The movie is broken into three parts, the last of which is too long, and like I said earlier, rather depressing.

Toure Muhammad
Your average movie watcher

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