AI: Admittedly, inferior
So I watched Steven Spielberg’s “AI” last night, and I have to say, my expectations were high. Keep in mind, I’m about 6 years and a thousand-and-a-half reviews late seeing and writing about this movie. I mostly wanted to see it because the name Stanley Kubrick is attached, and I don’t quite remember how (or why).
So the first act was, although really awkward, quite passable. Haley Joel Osment is a creepy loving robot who wants to be a real boy. Simple. There’s a story for us. Let’s go with that. Maybe we can add a little more action and tone down the Spielberg-glowy-light effect a little bit, too. No? Fine. So these parents adopt this mecha (short for mechanical, versus orga, short for organic, get it?), but then their real son comes back. Who are they to love? They want to love both, of course, but the real kid is kind of a dick to HJO, so they get rid of the robo-boy.
Damn, this is turning into summary, not review. I’m going to just cut myself short here and sum it all up: Act 1: passable. Act 2: goes a little too Mad Max for me, I could have done without it. Act 3: LOOOOOONG. It goes way farther than any self-respecting movie ever should. Hell, even Stanley Kubrick himself would have admitted the all-too-longness of this third act, and he’s freakin’ Stanley Kubrick. Everyone remembers the third act of 2001, yeah? It was long (but palatable, unlike….).
So there you have it. The movie starts off a little wobbly but promising, then continues to flush itself deeper into the sewage system, from future-chic toilet (act II), to “I’m going to kill myself if I see another *spoiler* incredibly thin alien” septic tank (act III). The whole movie, to me, was a squandered opportunity to make a somewhat likable film. Oh well. I’m not too worried about it.
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Tags: ai, AI: Artificial Intelligence, artificial intelligence, etcetera etcetera, film, haley joel osment, jude law, justifiably bitter?, mad max, mecha, movie, review, robot, robots, stanley kubrick, steven spielberg, three acts
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