A.I - Any Intelligence at all ... in this flipping movie?

A.I has opened to mixed reviews in the States (and has yet to appear at all on the shores of good old Blighty), but one thing is for sure ... it has been a blooming long time coming.

In fact, the mythos surrounding the making of this film is fast over-taking the nuts and bolts enjoyment of taking in the movie itself.

AI started out in life as a Stanley '2001' Kubrick dream, as Stan had originally been looking to get back to his science fiction roots in the 70s. But then a little movie called Star Wars came along, and for some strange reason, our Stan went off in a huff and decided he wasn't even going to try to top the antics of Darth Vader and chums until special effects had advanced even further.

Was it vanity? That the man who made such a careful, considered movie like 2001 (or an indulgent mishmash, depending on which side of the fence you are sitting on) couldn't bear to have his baby put out of the spotlight by a whistling robot trashcan and an aging thesp with a light sabre?

Kubrick, of course, based 2001 on the short story by some little known author - Arthur C. something, wasn't it? - and A.I was to be a homage to another crusty old British author ... one Brian Aldiss, and his short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long."

Then, after being dragged to the cinema by one of his young relatives to see Jurassic Park, he suddenly realised that SFX had finally advanced to the point where he might be able to do justice to his vision of A.I.

Kubrick busied himself away drawing up plans for the movie, getting some test shots done by Industrial Light and Magic and then ... well, in a decent world, he would have crafted a stunningly fine movie that would have stood as a tribute to his genius and legacy.

Well, in a decent world, that would have happened. But in this one, the old geezer went and frigging died on us! So now his legacy is Eyes Wide Shut, which is, as we might say in the UK, a second rate wank-movie.

Or was it? Enter Kubrick's chum, Steven Spielberg, who took over the movie and brought it to full term and an eventual Hollywood delivery.

What Spielberg had done is to create another tale of a lost kid in search of his missing home and family, kind of like, oh, let's say ET, or Empire of the Sun, or Hook, or Close Encounters, or that really stupid movie with the living flying saucers (helping old age pensioners fight off an evil property developer).

We don't want to give too much away (certainly not after's Uncle Geoff's piece last month on spoilers). Anyway, The hero of the movie, David, is an android boy who is being rasied by a human family after their own son gets sick with a rare disease and has to be put in cyrogenic suspension until a cure is invented.

David is rather happy for quite a few years (literally, because he a prototype emotion chip, much like Data in Star Trek The Next Generation), but then the family's real son is taken off ice when a cure is developed, and David feels like an unwanted puppy being thrown into a river.

He takes off in search of The Blue Fairy, a legendary McGuffin who can make him human (and thereby rekindle his human family's love for him).

David is helped in this quest by a sleazy robot male prostitute played by Jude Law, and the movie gets all dark as they wonder around a world flooded by the melting of the polar ice caps, seeing how badly replicants are treated ... all rather a la Bladerunner.

Spielberg is well ... very Spielberg, and all the heart-strings are pulled in the usual OTT sugar-fest, including a really out of place ending which slips in from nowhere ... again just like the original Bladerunner (not the Director's Cut version).

At the end of the day, A.I is another SF movie that you can write off as (a) good entertainment and (b) one to see for the amazing SFX. But, oh, all the might-have-beens had but Kubrick's ticker lasted out a year or two longer.

Somewhere out there is a parallel universe where this really was Kubrick's last movie, and boy was it a frigging fine way to kiss goodbye to his mortal coil.

Not, sadly, this universe though.

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NEWS ARCHIVE

OTHER CONTENT - August 2001

A.I - Any Intelligence at all ... in this flipping movie?
(FILM COMMENT)

Liar's Tale
(SHORT FICTION)

Pollen-8
(SHORT FICTION)

Scottish science fiction - Braveheart or Blowinghard?
(CONVENTIONS)

Sky Galleons of Mars comes to the Net
(WEB SITE REVIEWS)

Mammoths make a come-back (in book form, not in Jurassic Park III)
(BOOK REVIEWS)

PRUDE. 01/08/2001
I quite liked this movie, it was a real journey with great visuals, fine acting, and many touching scenes.

African Joe. 01/08/2001
The special effects were as good as you'd expect from a Spielberg flick, but I found the plot a little tiresome.

Steven Hill. 01/08/2001
I agree, A.I is just an updated sci-fi version of Pinocchio. More eye candy for the stupid masses. How about mixing some intelligence into AI? A good script costs a lot less than all those CGI graphics!

Darkside. 01/01/2002
Too bloody spot on. Too bloody bad these opinions aren't the ones highlighted on Enter[urp]tainment Tonight. Silent minority, anyone?

Kate. 01/01/2002
There was the potential for a good story here... about the robots, but the humans got in the way. At one point, when the Gigolo Joe robot had been caught and was going to be destroyed, he said "I Am!....I was." It seemed to me a statement of personhood; an acknowledgement of awareness and mortality. I did like the movie, there's plenty to think about. But it was an odd movie indeed.

Dean Warren. 01/01/2002
Hi Geoff. The subscribe menu put me off for a while since I was immediately confronted with having to register with Tropica. True? AI the movie, in my opinion, stank. Lots of old concepts and no emotion. Too long. I like your webpage.

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