| His Love Is Real. But He Is Not. A.I. Release Date: 21/09/01 Certificate: 12 Official Website Director: Steven Spielberg Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg & Bonnie Curtis Screenplay: Ian Watson & Steven Spielberg |
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| In the future, when the polar ice caps have melted and flooded New York, mankind have developed Mecha. Mecha are androids that fulfil a use such as cleaning or child-minding. But mostly shagging. A.I. tells the story of the first child-subsitute Mecha, David, played by Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment. Created to be the first machine capable of feeling love, the prototype is spurned by the family testing him out and goes on a quest for the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio in the unshakable belief that she can make him a Real Boy. |
| Based on Brian Aldiss' 1969 short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long, inconsistantly brilliant director Stanley Kubrick worked on the idea for the movie for years before deciding that it would be his next project after his 1999 movie Eyes Wide Shut. On his deathbed Kubrick handed the reins over to Spielberg, who wrote the screenplay for, and directed A.I. The result is an entertaining, if perhaps overlong, movie. The early teaser trailers probably haven't done it any favours, showing Osment's cute little blue eyes as he whiningly begs to be a Real Boy. This belies just how much depth the film has. I could quite happily go the rest of my life without seeing yet another character on the interminable Star Trek franchise and their mind-numbing quest to become seek out what it is to be human (Data, the hologram Doctor, the hot chick in the skin-tight outfits). Spielberg handles the subject matter much more deftly and interestingly though. He's also found the perfect piece of casting Osment as David. He's really creepy when he first moves in with his 'parents' (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards), and the audience can easily share in their unease. Anyone with a little brother will quickly come to sympathise with him, though, when he starts getting into trouble due to the machinations of his human 'brother' when he comes out of a coma. |
| Abandoned in the woods, seeing the world through David's eyes is the perfect device for introducing us to this strange yet familiar future landscape. He is accompanied by a brilliant, but criminally under-used, walking and talking teddy bear, and Gigolo Joe (Jude Law in an impressive comic turn as a Sex Mecha with some really cheesy chat up lines). One of the movie's main strengths lies in the world that A.I. is set in. Spielberg has imbued it with an dark edge, unlike his earlier, cutesy science-fiction efforts like E.T and Batteries Not Included. Refreshingly, it's done in a noncholant way too, locked in a cage (left) with some nightmarishly disfigured robots, David does not bat an eyelid. |
| In too much science-fiction there's this constant attempt to impress you with things like this. Like the way in Star Trek they can, and do, spin out whole episodes about talking clouds in space, and how you can practically hear the capital letters when they talk about futuristic technology. These characters supposedly live and work with ths machinery all the time, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't over-pronounce their names every single time. Sorry, I just really hate Star Trek. It works so much better in Star Wars, where technology and weird space monsters are merely a backdrop to conflict between the characters. A.I. is somewhere between the two. Definitely a movie you have to see, like most of Kubrick's and Spielberg's movies it will be much talked about, not least the suprising final act and its meaning. Brilliant performances from Osment and Law combine with well-realised future make A.I. a must-see. 8/10. |
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