Review: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

This is a Resurfaced review written in 2002 or earlier. For more information, please visit this link: Resurfaced Reviews.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Rating

Director

Steven Spielberg

Screenplay

Ian Watson, Steven Spielberg (Story: Brian Aldiss)

Length

2h 26m

Starring

Haley Joel Osment, Frances O’Connor, Sam Robards, Jake Thomas, Jude Law, William Hurt, Ken Leung

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

In a theme reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s humanity-meets-machinery vision in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Steven Spielberg takes the great director’s next to last project and makes a decent fable of a machine who learns to love.

“A.I.,” which stands for artificial intelligence, stars Oscar nominee Haley Joel Osment as David, the first artificial life form programmed to love. Created by Professor Hobby (William Hurt), David is contracted to Henry Swinton (Sam Robards) and his wife Monica (Frances O’Connor) who long for a child to raise while their son is in a coma and imprints on Monica alone.

When Henry deems David a danger to his family, he forces Monica to return him to the institute. On her way, she decides she cannot bear to see this child that loves her and she loves in return put to scrap and drops him off on the side of the road. There he ventures forth into an unknown world of decadence and adventure. Along the way, he meets Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) who takes him under his wing and takes him on his pursuit of the blue fairy, the one who can reunite him with his mother.

The film plays very similar to its fairy tale insert “Pinocchio.” The thematic elements of this robot’s search to find himself are right up Spielberg’s alley, but when parts of the film play like a Stanley Kubrick film, it’s hard to know what he wants this film to be. On one hand, the film is a fairy tale, told with the loving-tenderness of a father recounting his story to a child. On the other is a harsh essay on the lack of wisdom in giving an inanimate object an emotional core, blurring the line between man and machine.

This cautionary tale is played out through an excellent cast led by young Osment. If this film is any indication of his potential, we could see numerous Academy Award recognitions over his career. Reminiscent of a young Jodie Foster in “Taxi Driver,” Osment does have the personality inherent in raw talent. With Spielberg’s noticeable inability to direct children, Osment proves that his talent is real.

Then there’s Law, one of today’s finest young actors, who drags his two-dimensional character into the third dimension. Gigolo Joe isn’t programmed for emotion, but like he and other robots in the film, there is more than a glimmer of self-developed emotional intelligence. This in itself makes the film far deeper than readily imaginable.

“A.I.” was going to be a collaboration between populist director Spielberg and visionist director Kubrick, but after Kubrick died in 1999, the film fell into the sole propriety of Spielberg who, with Kubrick’s late wife’s permission, put the film into production and pushed aside lofty projects like “Memoirs of a Geisha.” It is his hand at which “A.I.” is both made and broken.

Spielberg never surmounts his inability to avoid sentimental diatribes. “A.I.” invests so much time in developing terrific characters and fantastic settings, but then careens towards a dangerous cliff beneath which mediocrity lies. So many elements mirror Kubrick’s surrealist style that when Spielberg’s takes control for the last thirty minutes, it’s not hard to feel cheated out of a perfectly fitting, if not morose ending.

“A.I.” is a deeply meaningful film in many respects. In the end, the film succumbs to heavy-handed filmmaking with a thoroughly uninteresting ending that feels like it is completely unnecessary.

Award Prospects

A.I. does have some interesting prospects for awards. If the critical lambasting of this year’s current releases string into the fall, this film could benefit. Jude Law may not have much, but he certainly has a shot alongside Haley Joel Osment as Supporting Actor and Actor respectively. Director is always a possibility as well as Screenplay. The most likely nominees are Original Score, Editing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Makeup, Sound, Sound Effects and Visual Effects. Of those, Art Direction and Visual Effects are the most likely winners.