Using Brian Aldiss' short story, "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" (which you can read here) and Pinocchio as springboards, A.I. is about David's (the creepily good Haley Joel Osment) search for love. David was built as a prototype, the first "mecha" (for "mechanical") to be able to feel love, and is given to Monica (Frances O'Connor) and Henry (Sam Robards), a couple whose son is in an apparently irreversible coma. Monica resists the idea at first but eventually decides to imprint herself onto David, a process which is permanent and irrevocable -- in other words, David will always love Monica as his mother, and if Monica ever decides she doesn't want him anymore, he will have to be destroyed. (This doesn't make any sense to me -- if he can be programmed, surely he can be deprogrammed or reprogrammed or something -- this provision seemed more like a contrivance for setting the plot in motion. Also, for reasons never explained, Henry does not imprint himself on David and, despite being the one who brings him home in the first place, seems to dislike and mistrust him.) But when their snotty son Martin (Jake Thomas) wakes from his coma and returns home, David's just a toy who's outworn his welcome. Martin is jealous and competitive and does all he can to get David in trouble. In what seems a remarkably, callously short-sighted and lazy way of solving the problem, Monica dumps David in the woods and gives him the briefest of instructions for survival. (I don't see how this is more compassionate or loving than having him destroyed -- after all, her way virtually guarantees that he will suffer.)
The second act of the movie is David's journey through the perils of the world he has been unaware of. He thinks Monica doesn't love him because he's a machine, and having heard the tale of Pinocchio, he believes that if he can become a real boy, she will love him again. As he searches for the Blue Fairy of the story, he gets captured by a savage ringmaster (an excellently sleazy Brendan Gleeson) who runs the Flesh Fair, where people gather to watch with bloodthirsty glee as mechas are violently dismembered (in other words, a really advanced version of "Battlebots"). Here he meets Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a literal sex machine who moves with a dancer's elegance and can switch on romantic music with a jerk of his head. (I've got two questions: How soon are they going to make these cyborgs, and how much do they cost? Oh, and can I get one that looks like Rupert Everett?) The two escape the Flesh Fair, and Joe decides to help David find the Blue Fairy.
I'll stop there -- sorry to give so much plot summary, but I feel it's needed to talk about the film. A.I. differs from other Spielberg films in that it seems to suggest some people just shouldn't have children and maybe should get a goldfish instead because they're easier to flush down the toilet when you get bored with them. Spielberg's previous oeuvre tended toward the view that there was nothing wrong with a person that couldn't be fixed by their having a child (see, for example, Jurassic Park, in which Sam Neill's character arc consists entirely of going from disliking children to liking them). In the prologue of the film, as scientist William Hurt is discussing his plan to build a robot that will feel emotion and be able to love a human, another scientist asks him what obligation that human will have to the robot. Hurt brushes the question off, but that's a central issue in the movie, and one that seems almost brushed off by Spielberg as well: what is Monica's responsibility to David after having made the choice to force him to love her? That Spielberg even raises this question, though, is surprising.
The first act of the movie seems the most Spielbergian because everything is sunny and warm, and we see the interaction between Monica and David. But look closer: Monica and Henry's apartment is spare and sterile, and they seemed ill prepared to deal with a child, even though they've had one before. They seem shocked when David does childlike things, like pouring Monica's expensive perfume all over himself. In essence, they don't deserve David's unconditional love. David Edelstein of Slate has a cogent, if somewhat harsh, analysis of the movie, in which he suggests that Spielberg and Kubrick both think machines will save humanity from itself, and that's the sense I get from this opening act, thinking about it: David's programmed love is the ideal, and humans can never measure up to it.
On a less philosophical note, the movie is visually inventive and engaging. The shots of half-submerged Manhattan are stunning (the opening voice-over tells us that global warming has flooded the earth, forcing the evacuation of coastal cities and straining resources to the point that reproduction is strictly limited. Gee, maybe someone should show this to the not-the-real-president and his coterie of flat-earthers before the next international meeting on the Kyoto Protocol). The visual effects, particularly with the mechas, are excellent, and David's companion, a mechanical bear named Teddy, is amazingly lifelike (and wonderfully appealing).
Haley Joel Osment really carries this movie. Without his sympathetic and winning portrayal, you wouldn't be so involved in David's plight throughout this long film. He's an unnaturally good actor for his age; maybe he really is synthetic. Things really come to life when Jude Law is on the screen; his jaunty mannerisms and magnetic attraction are a joy to watch. (Although David is supposed to be the first mecha who can feel, Joe seems to have feelings for David, wanting to stay with him whether out of loneliness or concern for him. Come to think of it, even Teddy seems to feel protective toward David -- so what makes David's ability to love so unique?)
I was absorbed by the movie up until the last 20 minutes. At one point, it seems as though the film is over; in fact, many people in the theater got up to leave. But then it keeps going, much to its detriment. Had it ended when it seemed to, it would have been on an ambiguous, yearning -- even Kubrickian -- note. Somewhat unresolved, but appropriately so. However, Spielberg takes over at that point and tacks on a sappy codicil that feels like it comes from a different movie entirely -- say, E. T. 2: The Return. It's not quite a happy ending, but it's maudlin and artificially wraps up the story. (By the way, for those of you who've seen it, those beings at the end are androids, not aliens, or so says Entertainment Weekly.)
Overall,
though, excluding the last part, I found A.I.
to be engaging and enjoyable. It's not as deep as it maybe wants
to be, but that's not necessarily a defect -- more bothersome are the
lapses
in its internal logic, which always signal to me laziness or
carelessness
(although that hardly seems likely given how long this movie was in the
works). But I definitely recommend it. Once again:
leave
when the ocean freezes. You'll thank me for it.
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