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Gene Hartline,
Brett Smrz,
Michele Sebek,
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Steven Spielberg,
Steven Spielberg
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: DreamWorks
: Drama, Science Fiction , Robots & Cyborgs, SNL Alums, Fairy Tales & Myths
: English, French
: English, Spanish, French
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Based on the 1969 short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, by Brian Aldiss, this science fiction fantasy bears similarities to Pinocchio (1940) and originated as a long-gestating project of director Stanley Kubrick that passed to his friend Steven Spielberg after Kubrick's death. Haley Joel Osment stars as David, a "mecha" or robot of the future, when the polar ice caps have melted and submerged many coastal cities, causing worldwide starvation and human dependence upon robotic assistance. The first mecha designed to experience love, David is the "son" of Henry (Sam Robards), an employee of the company that built the boy, and the grief-stricken Monica (Frances O'Connor). David is meant to replace the couple's hopelessly comatose son, but when their natural child recovers, David is abandoned and sets out to become "a real boy" worthy of his mother's affection. Along the way, David is mentored by a pleasure-providing mecha named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) and a talking "super toy" bear named Teddy. His adventures take him to the Roman Circus-style "Flesh Fair," where mechas are destroyed for the amusement of humans; Rouge City, where Gigolo Joe narrowly avoids capture by police; and finally a submerged New York City, where David's creator, Professor Hobby (William Hurt) reveals the secrets of the boy's creation. Brendan Gleeson and narrator Ben Kingsley co-star in A.I., which was adapted from Kubrick's treatment by Spielberg, in his first crack at screenwriting since Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
This disc contains the feature.
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| A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Bonus Disc) (2001) |
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| Perfectly fake.
by wes2666
September 28, 2004 - 9:49 PM PDT
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5 out of 6 members found this review helpful
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Most people I've talked to thought that AI was interesting, pretty, or at least tolerable right up until the "2000 years later" jump. Then the deus ex machina fulfillment of the android's dream put them off as uncomfortably schmaltzy.
Obviously Speilberg was riffing on the final bedroom sequence of 2001 and trying to bring it into his childlike universe. He didn't quite clear that bar, but the sequence is still one of the coldest and strangest in the film. The only way to grant David's wish to become a "real boy" is for the storyteller to kill off all of the other boys leaving David's memory as the last vestige of humanity.
In addition the "happy ending" that the super A.I. stage-manage for David is a perfectly artificial moment. It was created by artificial beings, for an artificial boy (who was designed to fulfil an idealized maternal dream), within the artifice of a fairy tale. Who could be a better director for this than Stephen Spielberg? |
| Watch Blade Runner instead
by hneline1
June 7, 2002 - 5:02 PM PDT
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7 out of 13 members found this review helpful
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| Haley Joel Osment gives an awesome performance as usual. The story, on the other hand, starts slow and then just gets weirder and weirder. It was one hour too long. If you want to experience "mechanical human" angst and the misgivings of real humans towards their mechanical counterparts, watch the classic, Blade Runner. |
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