film: review

> A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001)
A collaboration of two great directors, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, results in a powerful film named A.I.

By John C. Lyons
Film Critic

Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, and William Hurt

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Written by: Ian Watson, Steven Spielberg

Genre: Science Fiction

Our Rating: 9.5 out of 10

"His love is real. But he is not." In the future, the polar icecaps have melted and our planet becomes a lot smaller. The population is controlled, which doesn't give many people the opportunity to have a family. Professor Hobby (Hurt) and his team of scientists create a robotic boy (a "mecha") who looks and acts like a real one. Monica (O'Connor) and Henry Swinton have lost their son Martin to a coma. They visit their son each day hoping that he will awake. Professor Hobby gives the Swinton's an opportunity to have a son again with David, an artificial intelligence being. It takes some time but soon the Swintons learn to accept David, until the day that Martin wakes and everything changes.

Haley Joel Osment plays David brilliantly. Some may have thought that his "I see dead people" role in The Sixth Sense was a fluke and that he possesses no real talent as an actor (which is often the case for most childhood actors). However, Spielberg could not have cast anyone else as this character, in my opinion. Osment portrays each moment of joy and sadness in perfect artificiality; Spielberg knew what he was doing, as expected. When Martin returns to the Swinton household he becomes very jealous of David stealing some of his attention, playing many pranks to get David in trouble. David wants more than anything to be loved by his mother as a real boy and in true Pinocchio fashion, must seek out the Blue Fairy to help him achieve this.

A.I. is one of those films where you really do not know where the story is going to lead until the closing credits begin. I have kept the plot description here (as usual) at a minimum so that you will see the film for yourself and be surprised in all the right places. The movie easily kept my full attention the entire way through. For longer than a decade Steven Spielberg and the late Stanley Kubrick had been working together on this film, faxing ideas to one another in a very secretive manner. The combination of the ideas of these two men yields an amazing movie. I highly recommend this film.

I saw this film at the Tinseltown theaters on upper Peach Street in Erie.

PROs: Acting (especially Osment, O'Connor, and Law), story, and direction .

CONs: The ending may be a bit confusing or strange to some.

(01-0729)

related links:

A.I. - official site