Movie lacks intelligence,
outdoes special effects
By
Ian Clift
Summer Reporter
Steven Spielberg's "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence"
is artificial and lacks intelligence.
If you're looking for action, romance or a plot
line, don't go to see this movie. If you like computer generated images,
"A.I." weaves real images and computer generated images seamlessly.
"A.I." is a visually stunning film, but lacks
in-depth character development and tries too hard to pull at the heartstrings.
The movie opens in a world where, even after
the ice caps melt, society seems to move along without a glitch. Artificially
intelligent machines are created to do the jobs of service oriented
individuals.
In this cheerful post apocalypse, one robot designer
(William Hurt) decides to make a robot that loves but, while his fellow
scientists bring forward the question of ethics, the issue is left
vague.
The loving robot, David (Haley Joel Osment),
is the prototype for a new line of child-sized thinking machines.
He is placed in the home of Monica and Henry Swinton (Frances O'Connor
and Sam Robards).
When the experiment fails, David is abandoned
in the woods in true fairytale fashion, where he decides to set out
in search of "the blue fairy" in order to become a real boy.
David is accompanied on his journey by a robot
bear named Teddy and the colorful Gigolo Joe (Jude Law).
Osment plays a convincing role as a robot and
Law livens up the plot a little, but he seems to be pointless to the
story.
"A.I", written by Steven Spielberg, developed
for 15 years by the late Stanley Kubrick and finally directed by Spielberg,
lasts two hours and thirteen minutes, but could have been more effective
at half an hour. It did not make any interesting comments about our
future and only made the same old point about the inhumanity of man.
"A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," is a simple
fairy tale with all the bizarre twists removed. The plot was shallow
and the characters were dull. If this is the best Hollywood has to
offer, then you should look somewhere else for entertainment.
