ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001)

Movie Review
I. INTRODUCTION

In the not-so-far future the polar ice caps have melted and the resulting rise of the ocean
waters has drowned all the coastal cities of the world. Withdrawn to the interior of the
continents, the human race keeps advancing, reaching the point of creating realistic robots
(called mechas) to serve them. One of the mecha-producing companies builds David, an
artificial kid which is the first to have real feelings, especially a never-ending love for his
mother, Monica. Monica is the woman who adopted him as a substitute for her real son, who
remains in suspended animation due to an unknown illness (cryostasis), stricken by an
incurable disease. David is living happily with Monica and her husband, but when their real
son returns home after a cure is discovered, his life changes dramatically.
II. PLOT SUMMARY
In the 22nd century, rising sea levels from global warming have wiped out coastal cities,
reducing the world's population. Mecha, humanoid robots seemingly capable of complex
thought but lacking in emotions, have been created. In Madison, David, a prototype Mecha
child capable of experiencing love, is given to Henry Swinton and his wife Monica, whose
son Martin contracted a rare disease and has been placed in suspended animation. Monica
feels uneasy with David, but eventually warms to him and activates his imprinting protocol,
causing him to have an enduring childlike love for her. David seeks to have Monica express
the same love towards him. David is befriended by Teddy, a robotic teddy bear which
belonged to Martin. Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home. Martin
becomes jealous of David, and taunts him to perform worrisome acts, such as cutting off
locks of Monica's hair while she is sleeping. At a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes
David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. David grabs onto Martin, and
they both fall into the pool. Martin is saved before he drowns, and Henry convinces Monica
to return David to his creators to be destroyed. On the way there, Monica has a change of
heart and spares David from destruction by leaving him in the woods. With Teddy as his only
accompaniment, David recalls the story about The Adventures of Pinocchio and decides to
find the Blue Fairy so that she may turn him into a real boy, whom he believes will win back
Monica's love.
David and Teddy are captured by a Flesh Fair, where obsolete Mecha are destroyed before
jubilant crowds. David is nearly destroyed himself and pleads for his life. The audience,
deceived by David's realistic nature, revolts and allows David to escape alongside Gigolo Joe,
a male prostitute Mecha on the run from authorities after being charged with murder. David,
Teddy and Joe go to the decadent resort town of Rouge City, where Dr. Know, a holographic
answer engine, directs them to the top of Rockefeller Center in the flooded ruins of
Manhattan. There, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting
demonstrates David's ability to love and desire. David finds several copies of him, including
a female variant Darlene, boxed and ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of
individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While
underwater, David catches sight of a figure resembling the Blue Fairy before Joe rescues him
in an amphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, Joe is captured via electromagnet by
authorities. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Fairy, which turns out to
be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. The two become trapped when the Wonder
Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing the Blue Fairy to be real, David asks the statue to turn
him into a real boy, and repeats this request until his internal power source is depleted.
Two thousand years later, humans are extinct and Manhattan is buried under glacial ice. The
Mecha have evolved into an advanced form called Specialists, and have become interested in
learning about humanity. They find and revive David and Teddy. David walks to the frozen
Blue Fairy statue, which collapses when he touches it. The Specialists reconstruct the
Swinton family home from David's memories and explain to him, via an interactive image of
the Blue Fairy, that it is impossible to make David a real boy. However, at David's insistence,
they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This
Monica can only live for one day, and the process cannot be repeated. David spends his
happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, she tells David that she has
always loved him: "the everlasting moment he had been waiting for", the narrator says. David
falls asleep as well.
III. DESCRIPTION

In A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, David looks like an 11 years old boy but is really a
"mecha," a highly developed robot. He is the creation of Dr. Hobby (William Hurt), who
decided to take robots a step further and develop the first robot that can feel love. One of his
employees, Henry Swinton, is chosen to be the beta tester. Henry and his wife, Monica, have
a son, Martin, who is critically ill. At first, Monica is horrified by the idea of adopting a
mechanical boy, but her need for love is so overpowering that she initiates the sequence that
will bind David irrevocably to her forever. He immediately changes from a pleasant if
emotionless toy into a child whose mother is his whole world. He loves, which means that he
is needy, jealous, and thinks like a 3-year-old, calling for his mommy and wanting her all to
him. When Martin gets better and returns home, he and David are jealous of one another.
When Monica believes that David may be a threat to Martin, she sets him loose in the woods.
David is determined to find the Blue Fairy, who can turn him into a real boy, as she did with
Pinocchio, because he thinks that will make it possible for Monica to love him.
In theaters: June 29, 2001
Main casts: Frances O'Connor, Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law
Director: Steven Spielberg
Studio: Universal Pictures
Genre: Science Fiction
Run time: 2 hours, 25 minutes and 51 seconds
MPAA rating: PG-13
MPAA explanation: some sexual content and violent images
IV. ANALYSIS
The themes of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is simple: the need to be real and the desire to be
loved. It’s the execution of those themes that are exceedingly complex. Try for a moment to
mentally merge the classic children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit with Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey. Can’t make it work? A.I. does.
The polar caps have melted. Greenhouse gases have done their worst. And much of the globe
is under water. Technology makes up for human deficiency. Artificial intelligence is at its
zenith (highest point). That’s when David is born. Or, more accurately, built. He is the first
robot child to be constructed and the first to be given the ability to feel. Not just the sensation
of pain or cold, but the ability to bond, trust, love and hate. But he finds that still is not
enough. He wants to be a "real little boy." He wants his mother to love him for who he is, not
for the things he does for her. (Is it a big surprise that the fairytale of Pinocchio is used
throughout the film to mirror futuristic happenings?) So David finds himself on an all-too-
human quest. And it leads him to places you’d never dream of (or even have nightmares
about). In ways you’d never think of.
Positive elements: Everything about David’s quest for love radiates with valuable life
lessons. Familial love. Unconditional love. Eternal love. One robot remarks that the "ones
who made us are always looking for the one who made them." And obviously, the journey to
become "real" is really a journey to be accepted.
Spiritual content: A scientist remarks that his ambition to create a robot that can feel is
similar to God’s. "In the beginning, didn’t God create Adam to love him?" he asks. But not
everything is so benevolent. Standing outside a Catholic church, Gigolo Joe smirks that he
gets a lot of business from the women who go inside to find God, then come out to find him.
Christian moviegoers will also notice a distinct absence of God during catastrophic
circumstances that should warrant His inclusion.
Sexual content: Gigolo Joe is programmed to flirt. He’s also programmed for sex.
Thankfully, he’s never seen consummating any of his relationships. What does appear
onscreen is the personality-shifting Joe telling his tricks how amazing their encounter is
going to be. "Once you’ve had a lover robot," he tells one woman, "you’ll never want a real
man again." Joe gets a car full of guys to give him a lift by teasing them with tales of robotic
hookers. He uses a small projection device to show them a moving image of a scantily-clad
woman dancing. In what amounts to a giant red-light district, the landscape is littered with
garish, sexually suggestive signs, lights and statues.
Violent content: One of Joe’s "women" is found lying dead in a hotel room. Her husband
found out about her robot romances and killed her for it. Elsewhere, in a circus of sorts called
a "Flesh Fair," robots are destroyed in gruesome ways. Since many of them look and act
human, the spectacle takes on a dark hue as acid dissolves their faces, whirling propeller
blades make mincemeat of their bodies and fire chars their skin. One machine’s grisly head
flies through the air, landing right in front of David (and moviegoers). In a fit of angst and
frustration, David attacks another robot, decapitating the being and bludgeoning it with a
blunt weapon.
Crude or profane language: A half-dozen misuses of God’s name. Two instances are
combined with the word "d--n." No other profanity eats through the skin of this PG-13 film.
Kudos to Spielberg for not using up his "rating allotment" just because he can.
Drug and alcohol content: David’s mom and dad drink wine with dinner.
Other negative elements: An innocent David barges in on his mother, Monica, while she’s
using the toilet (no nudity is shown).
V. CONCLUSION/EVALUATION

Artificial Intelligence (2001) is the hardest kind of movie to review but it is also one of the
most enjoyable kinds of movie to watch. It's been over two weeks since my screening of
Steven Allan Spielberg's emotionally harrowing epic about a robot boy. Before writing my
review, I wanted to let its themes, content, and characters sink into my head and make a solid
impact. The film was based on an idea of Stanley Kubrick, but when he died in 1999,
Spielberg took charge of the project. Kubrick and Spielberg are two of the greatest directors
American cinema has to offer; its pure pleasure watching their ideas clash and flow. I am not
going to examine each individual theme here, either. That would ruin the movie for you.

The movie presents many themes on screen, but it's important to take what you get out of it. I
hate it when other critics state the movie's themes on paper as if it's a fact. There is far too
much room for interpretation to reveal this movie's message, or the message of any Kubrick
film for that matter. Ask 100 people, and you might get 100 different answers. It is also the
kind of movie-one of the year's best.

Critics and audiences alike have torn apart this movie's ending-a clear miscalculation by
Spielberg. If Kubrick were in charge, the movie would have called it quits about twenty
minutes earlier in an unsettling sequence that takes place in the ocean. But Spielberg, who
always seems entranced by science fiction, injects an additional segment into the mix that
does not work quite as well, but isn't so completely awful that it deserves such harsh
criticism. It still leaves us with an open, startled emotional disorientation. The movie before
the conclusion is so complex, moving, and involving in so many different ways the last
twenty minutes didn't even come close to spoiling the movie for me.

The movie transpires sometime in the near future after the polar ice caps have melted and
flooded coastal cities and reduced natural resources. Mechanical androids have become
popular since they require no commodities. Reproduction has also become highly illegal.
Machines provide sexual services and if anyone wants a child, they will purchase a robot.
However, the difference between a robot child and a living child is that robots cannot love.
That's the task Professor Hobby of Cybertronics Manufacturing has solved. He has made a
robot child that can love.

We can separate the movie into two separate segments. I do not want to reveal too much
about each plot because the pleasure of watching this movie evolves from the revealing of the
connecting plots. I will, however, briefly say the first details a robot child's interaction within
a family, and the second deals with the robot's estrangement from its family and the quest to
regain the mother's love.
I can imagine the material in Kubrick's hands. The movie's opening scene has a female robot
begin to undress in a public office. Spielberg cuts the action before she reveals any explicit
nudity. Kubrick would have had various shots of full frontal nudity. Spielberg, never
comfortable with sexual material, leaves out much of the motivation behind Kubrick's ideas.
One of the biggest problems in the movie is the lack of edge with the sexual content. Jude
Law plays a robot named Gigolo Joe who lives in a sex fantasy called Rouge City where
people from everywhere come to seek sexual satisfaction. The central character, David, a
robot boy played by Haley Joel Osment, motivates every action in the story except for the
scenes in Rouge City. Why contain such a perverse character and setting when his entire
existence simply displays a mood that has already been well established. Obviously, the
filmmakers toned the aspects of the movie down to warrant a Parents Strongly Cautioned –
Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13 (PG-13) rating but why? The
movie is not appropriate for children anyway, and it's far too complex. Undoubtedly, if
Kubrick were in charge the movie would have to be re-cut to avoid a No children under 17
admitted (NC-17) rating. Spielberg should have either taken advantage of the perverse
material or completely eliminated it.

Here I am, doing exactly what I said that I wouldn't do, and at nearly 850 words, I still have
not clearly expressed my own opinions on the film. I have many notes in front of me that
display my reaction as I watched the film, but I am not going to use them for they reveal too
much about the movie. Artificial Intelligence is a very personal film, a deeply moving,
scientific, careful, and harrowing motion picture that displays startling talent on screen and
behind the scenes. The special effects are extraordinary. The performances are alarming-the
immensely talented Haley Joel Osment may once again be up for an Academy Award
nomination. Go see the movie, then talk about it with others. It's the kind of film that you can
spend hours thinking about, then go see it again.