Film Review of Artificial Intelligence AI
Year: 2001 Reviewer: Chris Docker
A film with fantastic possibilities that is sadly flawed. Set well into the future, a cybernetics company makes the first life-like robot that is not only a boy child but imprints itself on the adopted mother and learns by developing responses based on love. Haley Joel Osmet largely has to carry the film and at times I felt his innocent questioning expression wasn't quite up to it. We go back to the banality, frequently admitted in the film that, at the end of the day, he is no more than a machine. The machine may be a therapeutic tool for a mother who has lost her only natural child, but beyond that? It seemed incomprehensible to me that such a society would develop with so little in the way of ethical codes of practice, and so seemed to put the film more firmly in the younger-audience market, yet some of the scenes would be unacceptable to those younger audiences. That leaves quite a narrow bracket of, say, 12 to 18 years. The dynamics of Mother-Child emotion are played out quite well at certain times, and it would probably be enjoyed by parents who don't shy away from the obvious cheesiness or the sci-fi trappings. The film's best part, for me, was the ingenious ending, that brings further elements into play and unexpectedly gives some food for thought - though not enough to justify nearly two and a half hours of cheesy comic-adventure. Very Spielberg, but not quite in the class of his all-time greats.
Rating: 7/10
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