A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001)
A REVIEW IN THREE PARTS (as appropriate)
3:30 pm June 29th: to the Cloudmakers list
I just got back from the first showing here and I'm staggering. I haven't endured such incredible AGONY in a movie since "Boxing Helena", but at that one, at least I wasn't the only one laughing.
It would be a BEAUTIFUL movie if it hadn't been scriped by Steven Spielberg. The script is GALLOPINGLY AWFUL. And it starts out terrible and keeps getting progressively worse throughout until your head is ready to explode.
The robots and CGI are fantastic! Haley Joel Osment is acting as though he were still working with Stanley Kubrick - in other words, incredible - he's really quite effective, and I never get sick of him, even though he says more or less the same lines over and over again. He really makes it (no pun intended) real. And Jude Law is stellar, as usual; I knew I'd love Gigolo Joe, but I didn't know that he was supposed to be the comic relief.
Everyone else is terrible/non-existent.
See it in Portugese or some other language completely foreign to you; perhaps Swahili. That way you won't be so aware of the astonishingly huge gaping plot holes and the bad paper-towel-commercial cliches that pass for dialogue. I wanted so badly to love this movie. Maybe, after a while, I can transform it into camp and it'll be one of those bad movies that I love. Stanley Kubrick's films were no stranger to stilted, artificial dialogue and preposterous situations, but it was deliberate, and I don't think this is; I think Spielberg had no idea what he was doing. I think we need to pay someone to kidnap Steve, hog-tie him, and send him to the Iowa Writer's Conference for a couple of years and not release him until he can accomplish subtlety.
If you can enjoy it, more power to you! I would just have to regress back to the age of 8 when I hadn't actually seen any movies that were complex, tightly constructed, and intriguing - namely, before I'd seen films like Stanley Kubrick's.
6:00 pm June 29th, to the Cloudmakers list in response to another post
Gigolo Joe is my utter dreamboat. Jude Law can turn the most preposterous dialogue into hilarious camp. and his dancing. But why
are you surprised? He's been excellent in every single thing I've seen
him in. I think he's the logical successor to Malcolm McDowell.
> -AWSOME (sic), seamless special effects
Mostly, yes
> -Almost made me cry 3 times(but not at end!)
It almost made me cry when I realized that Stanley Kubrick is really
dead and that there's no way that he can just do the movie over.
> -Actually made me laugh a few times too
I genuinely laughed quite a bit. I loved David and Monica hide and
seek. That scene went on for a long long time, but for some reason it
was all right. Spielberg actually taking a page from Kubrick's book
and not rushing a movie; let the actors develop naturally.
> -Flesh Fair--really had me simpathysing (sic) with the A.I.'s
The whole movie, and everything about A.I. in general, from the game on
up, has me sympathizing with A.I.s. Then again, I root for the
oppressed, no matter what or where they are. =)
> now, resons I left the theater disappointed
> -Monica Swintons Character was NOT DEVELOPED AT ALL
Because it was assumed that the audience would feel the same way she
did, that all her responses would be shared by the audience, that the
soundtrack would supply character development to save time - it's
sloppiness.
> - have someone else be Martin, Jake Loyd was trying way to hard to
> seem cruel and came off as vagely stupid- over-acting (read: But you
> PROMISED *evil smirk*)
That's not Jake Lloyd! (is it?) (it's not - it's Jake Thomas. big difference.)
> -the entire first parts music was distractingly off, after a while it
> stopped actively bothering me but in opening home scenes the music
> was flat out wrong.
John Williams has a lot to learn if he thinks that slipping in a few
flatted ninths is going to completely transform a generally saccharine
soundtrack. I appreciate that they're there, but there are big parts
where no soundtrack is necessary. Of course, Spielberg likes music all
the time in his movies, just in case we forget how we're supposed to
feel.
> -The movie should've stopped with him trapped with the blue fairy, it
> would've been a haunting image of a boy eternally wishing to be loved
> to someone will never hear him, but instead they made their last and
> by far worst mistake
Thank you, thank you, for stating this - I kept wondering when the
movie would end, and that seemed perfect, and in fact, a whole bunch of
people left the theater at that point. From that point on I was
clutching my temples in psychic agony.
> -made the robots look too much like aliens--the general viewing
> adience will assume their aliens, and besides that they were the only
> part in the movie that was obviously fake, even the snow in the end
> looked false.
The "frost" on David's face is so obviously cornstarch that it blows my
mind.
> -too much narration at the end
Too much narration period. There shouldn't have been any. None of it
was necessary. a title card with the date on it. A mention somewhere
in the dialogue about the melting of the ice caps and the drowning of
the coastal cities... HOW HARD COULD IT HAVE BEEN? Y can't Steven
wryte!?
> -didn't explain why david could cry- I assume the robots gave him an
> upgrade
Just one more massive plot hole.
> -How did Teddy get back to David? Asimple shot of the little girl
> letting go of teddy because she's startled by the riot would've fixed
> this
See above.
> -Why did Joe say "I am I was" instead of just good-bye or something?
Oh, he wanted to say something x-tra swanky. Oh, Joe. If only the
movie had more Gigolo Joe, and that he had more to do in the picture.
They should have just gone for the R rating and let him be the
character that Kubrick envisioned - a lot nastier and more complex, a
lot more like Alex from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, but actually decent, or at least neutral, at heart. Gigolo Joe at work. Gigolo Joe's sexbot
peers. *sigh*
I'm so depressed over this movie... because I desperately want to see
it again, but I paid $0.25 to see it the first time and I'm glad
because I would have been furious to have paid more. But I want to SEE
it again, minus the dialogue. The dialogue is what's wrong with this
movie -- not the story, not the acting, and certainly not the visual
direction. It's got a terrible, terrible script, and unfortunately,
it's like having a killer body and breath that smells like rotten fish.
8:00 pm, July 3rd
Time heals many wounds. The second viewing was so easy and pleasant that I'm glad I invested another gift certifcate (and another 25 cents) to give it a second chance. OK, Steven, I was hard on you the first time. I think I was annoyed that you even attempted to make the movie Kubricky - it just made the contrast that much harsher and harder to accept. Once you know the "explain every fucking thing" script, it's easier to just tune out the words and grasp the deeper meaning. The dialogue isn't really that much of a problem once your disbelief has been sufficiently suspended, a mental task that I believe takes two viewings to actually accomplish. I don't think that, no matter how many times I see it, I can accept the voice-overs done by Ben Kingsley; they're just terrible, stupid, idiotic, out of place, so jarring that they ruin the film just at the point when you're supposed to be so enveloped in the glorious alienation and despair. I'm telling you, a title card, with "2000 years later" on it would have worked marvellously; they thought it was good enough for "TWENTY MONTHS LATER" at the beginning, didn't they? Still, the performances still strike me in much the same way. HJO is amazing. Jude Law is the only one having fun; he's very alive, very robust, very carnal, far more so than any of the "human" characters. Sam Robards is a disgrace to his family; I mean, I guess he didn't have much to do except be a jerk, but still. He's not even really there. Jake Thomas is actually fairly good as the thawed-out asshole kiddo Martin Swinton, and Frances O'Connor does what she has to do. She's a simulacrum of a mommy, a convincingly neurotic mad housewife (then again, I would be too, if I had to keep that gigantic Swinton mansion clean all by myself). William Hurt is just going through the motions - he's been the slightly touched, thoughtless scientist so many times that he pretty much phoned in this performance. We also get the Star Voice Power of a relatively restrained Robin Williams, a soulless and saccharine Meryl Streep, and Chris Rock, as the Nigro Standup Comic droid who gets shot out of a flaming cannon (and yet, the presence of this little niblet of 2001 pop culture is so horribly jarring and out of place that watching his flaming head drip down the bars of the Flesh Fair cage was not retribution enough). (Then again, it's almost a nice homage of Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man, but somehow I doubt that Chris Rock had that in mind).
Please, Lord, DVD, soon. Please. There's just too much to see, to take in, mull over, pass by, take note of, and I'm done with seeing this film until it's in the cheap theaters. Or, that's the plan, anyway.
And now... COMEDY AND "WTF?" FUN! I can't actually TELL anybody any of this stuff, but it'll drive me nuts if I can't express it somehow-
* Apparently, Cybertronics decided to keeps costs down on the new line of David kiddiebots by filling them with mustard.
* Henry Swinton is SO FIRED.
* When did Ministry become the poor man's White Zombie?
* Apparently, one of the side effects of the global warming is to make the New Jersey countryside closely resemble the Pacific Northwest coastal rainforest. hey, it could happen!
* Martin does indeed act like a big 5-year-old brat in an 11-year-old body. But he managed to make a lot of friends after getting out of the cooler, and they're jerks, too, even though they're obviously 14. Or MAYBE it's six months later. Who can tell with this movie? Smoke another bowl.
* A.I. Bonghits/Drinking game: take a big hit every time David says "mommy". Vomit copiously. That's the spirit.
* I really like the jelly robots at the end, even though they're obviously lying, using little fucks of the future. The scenes with them in would work beautifully if Spielberg had decided on one course of action - is David's fantasy house "real" (i.e., did they create an actual physical space) or is it a construct (which would mean that everything in it is also a construct, a concept that I prefer)? If it's "real", how does David cry? (he's not supposed to be physically capable of it) If it's not, why would Ben Kingsley Jelly Robot hang out with David on his bed instead of taking a more pleasing form, like Gigolo Joe, or even - well, heck, any Gigolo Joe is appreciated, so we'll say that. Oh well, whatever. Smoke another bowl.
* I figure the Jelly Babies took David's memories and responses, then restored his empty shell to its mint-in-box condition to fetch a higher price on the intergalactic collector's auction.
* Poor Teddy - people keep sticking their hand up his ass, trying to turn him on. It only works when it's Monica, though. Does that work for other cybernetic creatures? Naturally, Gigolo Joe comes to mind.
* David really should have taken Joe up on his offer to stay in Rouge City and be a superho sidekick. That would have been a very, very interesting sidetrack for the movie. What did Kubrick have in mind, anyway?
* Least favorite moment in the film (besides the ending voiceover of course) - yelling "Aaah!" as the carload of losers (and Joe) drive into Rouge City through the huge gaping mouth toll booths - I mean, Jesus, we're all already thinking about it, it's not like we need a huge kick in the tailbone to tell us to watch out for the Kinky Visuals.
Not a PG movie. At all. PG-13 would make more sense (didn't Spielberg do something like this before, and "Gremlins" was one of the films that made the PG-13 rating really necessary? Dickweed). An R would have been ideal. A nice, 3.5 hour R-rated extravaganza that cost about $10 million more and another eighteen months to make. Instead, we have this, and while it's easy to point out the things that it's NOT, it's much better in the end, I think, to appreciate it for what it is. Spielberg had better be glad he's doing a normal human movie next, because this is the kind of bizarre mess that ruins other directors' careers. Then again, Spielberg's a guaranteed cash cow, he's got more money than God, and he's the opposite of indie. He answers to no one.
Especially because Stanley Kubrick is dead.
3:30 pm June 29th: to the Cloudmakers list
I just got back from the first showing here and I'm staggering. I haven't endured such incredible AGONY in a movie since "Boxing Helena", but at that one, at least I wasn't the only one laughing.
It would be a BEAUTIFUL movie if it hadn't been scriped by Steven Spielberg. The script is GALLOPINGLY AWFUL. And it starts out terrible and keeps getting progressively worse throughout until your head is ready to explode.
The robots and CGI are fantastic! Haley Joel Osment is acting as though he were still working with Stanley Kubrick - in other words, incredible - he's really quite effective, and I never get sick of him, even though he says more or less the same lines over and over again. He really makes it (no pun intended) real. And Jude Law is stellar, as usual; I knew I'd love Gigolo Joe, but I didn't know that he was supposed to be the comic relief.
Everyone else is terrible/non-existent.
See it in Portugese or some other language completely foreign to you; perhaps Swahili. That way you won't be so aware of the astonishingly huge gaping plot holes and the bad paper-towel-commercial cliches that pass for dialogue. I wanted so badly to love this movie. Maybe, after a while, I can transform it into camp and it'll be one of those bad movies that I love. Stanley Kubrick's films were no stranger to stilted, artificial dialogue and preposterous situations, but it was deliberate, and I don't think this is; I think Spielberg had no idea what he was doing. I think we need to pay someone to kidnap Steve, hog-tie him, and send him to the Iowa Writer's Conference for a couple of years and not release him until he can accomplish subtlety.
If you can enjoy it, more power to you! I would just have to regress back to the age of 8 when I hadn't actually seen any movies that were complex, tightly constructed, and intriguing - namely, before I'd seen films like Stanley Kubrick's.
6:00 pm June 29th, to the Cloudmakers list in response to another post
Gigolo Joe is my utter dreamboat. Jude Law can turn the most preposterous dialogue into hilarious camp. and his dancing. But why
are you surprised? He's been excellent in every single thing I've seen
him in. I think he's the logical successor to Malcolm McDowell.
> -AWSOME (sic), seamless special effects
Mostly, yes
> -Almost made me cry 3 times(but not at end!)
It almost made me cry when I realized that Stanley Kubrick is really
dead and that there's no way that he can just do the movie over.
> -Actually made me laugh a few times too
I genuinely laughed quite a bit. I loved David and Monica hide and
seek. That scene went on for a long long time, but for some reason it
was all right. Spielberg actually taking a page from Kubrick's book
and not rushing a movie; let the actors develop naturally.
> -Flesh Fair--really had me simpathysing (sic) with the A.I.'s
The whole movie, and everything about A.I. in general, from the game on
up, has me sympathizing with A.I.s. Then again, I root for the
oppressed, no matter what or where they are. =)
> now, resons I left the theater disappointed
> -Monica Swintons Character was NOT DEVELOPED AT ALL
Because it was assumed that the audience would feel the same way she
did, that all her responses would be shared by the audience, that the
soundtrack would supply character development to save time - it's
sloppiness.
> - have someone else be Martin, Jake Loyd was trying way to hard to
> seem cruel and came off as vagely stupid- over-acting (read: But you
> PROMISED *evil smirk*)
That's not Jake Lloyd! (is it?) (it's not - it's Jake Thomas. big difference.)
> -the entire first parts music was distractingly off, after a while it
> stopped actively bothering me but in opening home scenes the music
> was flat out wrong.
John Williams has a lot to learn if he thinks that slipping in a few
flatted ninths is going to completely transform a generally saccharine
soundtrack. I appreciate that they're there, but there are big parts
where no soundtrack is necessary. Of course, Spielberg likes music all
the time in his movies, just in case we forget how we're supposed to
feel.
> -The movie should've stopped with him trapped with the blue fairy, it
> would've been a haunting image of a boy eternally wishing to be loved
> to someone will never hear him, but instead they made their last and
> by far worst mistake
Thank you, thank you, for stating this - I kept wondering when the
movie would end, and that seemed perfect, and in fact, a whole bunch of
people left the theater at that point. From that point on I was
clutching my temples in psychic agony.
> -made the robots look too much like aliens--the general viewing
> adience will assume their aliens, and besides that they were the only
> part in the movie that was obviously fake, even the snow in the end
> looked false.
The "frost" on David's face is so obviously cornstarch that it blows my
mind.
> -too much narration at the end
Too much narration period. There shouldn't have been any. None of it
was necessary. a title card with the date on it. A mention somewhere
in the dialogue about the melting of the ice caps and the drowning of
the coastal cities... HOW HARD COULD IT HAVE BEEN? Y can't Steven
wryte!?
> -didn't explain why david could cry- I assume the robots gave him an
> upgrade
Just one more massive plot hole.
> -How did Teddy get back to David? Asimple shot of the little girl
> letting go of teddy because she's startled by the riot would've fixed
> this
See above.
> -Why did Joe say "I am I was" instead of just good-bye or something?
Oh, he wanted to say something x-tra swanky. Oh, Joe. If only the
movie had more Gigolo Joe, and that he had more to do in the picture.
They should have just gone for the R rating and let him be the
character that Kubrick envisioned - a lot nastier and more complex, a
lot more like Alex from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, but actually decent, or at least neutral, at heart. Gigolo Joe at work. Gigolo Joe's sexbot
peers. *sigh*
I'm so depressed over this movie... because I desperately want to see
it again, but I paid $0.25 to see it the first time and I'm glad
because I would have been furious to have paid more. But I want to SEE
it again, minus the dialogue. The dialogue is what's wrong with this
movie -- not the story, not the acting, and certainly not the visual
direction. It's got a terrible, terrible script, and unfortunately,
it's like having a killer body and breath that smells like rotten fish.
8:00 pm, July 3rd
Time heals many wounds. The second viewing was so easy and pleasant that I'm glad I invested another gift certifcate (and another 25 cents) to give it a second chance. OK, Steven, I was hard on you the first time. I think I was annoyed that you even attempted to make the movie Kubricky - it just made the contrast that much harsher and harder to accept. Once you know the "explain every fucking thing" script, it's easier to just tune out the words and grasp the deeper meaning. The dialogue isn't really that much of a problem once your disbelief has been sufficiently suspended, a mental task that I believe takes two viewings to actually accomplish. I don't think that, no matter how many times I see it, I can accept the voice-overs done by Ben Kingsley; they're just terrible, stupid, idiotic, out of place, so jarring that they ruin the film just at the point when you're supposed to be so enveloped in the glorious alienation and despair. I'm telling you, a title card, with "2000 years later" on it would have worked marvellously; they thought it was good enough for "TWENTY MONTHS LATER" at the beginning, didn't they? Still, the performances still strike me in much the same way. HJO is amazing. Jude Law is the only one having fun; he's very alive, very robust, very carnal, far more so than any of the "human" characters. Sam Robards is a disgrace to his family; I mean, I guess he didn't have much to do except be a jerk, but still. He's not even really there. Jake Thomas is actually fairly good as the thawed-out asshole kiddo Martin Swinton, and Frances O'Connor does what she has to do. She's a simulacrum of a mommy, a convincingly neurotic mad housewife (then again, I would be too, if I had to keep that gigantic Swinton mansion clean all by myself). William Hurt is just going through the motions - he's been the slightly touched, thoughtless scientist so many times that he pretty much phoned in this performance. We also get the Star Voice Power of a relatively restrained Robin Williams, a soulless and saccharine Meryl Streep, and Chris Rock, as the Nigro Standup Comic droid who gets shot out of a flaming cannon (and yet, the presence of this little niblet of 2001 pop culture is so horribly jarring and out of place that watching his flaming head drip down the bars of the Flesh Fair cage was not retribution enough). (Then again, it's almost a nice homage of Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man, but somehow I doubt that Chris Rock had that in mind).
Please, Lord, DVD, soon. Please. There's just too much to see, to take in, mull over, pass by, take note of, and I'm done with seeing this film until it's in the cheap theaters. Or, that's the plan, anyway.
And now... COMEDY AND "WTF?" FUN! I can't actually TELL anybody any of this stuff, but it'll drive me nuts if I can't express it somehow-
* Apparently, Cybertronics decided to keeps costs down on the new line of David kiddiebots by filling them with mustard.
* Henry Swinton is SO FIRED.
* When did Ministry become the poor man's White Zombie?
* Apparently, one of the side effects of the global warming is to make the New Jersey countryside closely resemble the Pacific Northwest coastal rainforest. hey, it could happen!
* Martin does indeed act like a big 5-year-old brat in an 11-year-old body. But he managed to make a lot of friends after getting out of the cooler, and they're jerks, too, even though they're obviously 14. Or MAYBE it's six months later. Who can tell with this movie? Smoke another bowl.
* A.I. Bonghits/Drinking game: take a big hit every time David says "mommy". Vomit copiously. That's the spirit.
* I really like the jelly robots at the end, even though they're obviously lying, using little fucks of the future. The scenes with them in would work beautifully if Spielberg had decided on one course of action - is David's fantasy house "real" (i.e., did they create an actual physical space) or is it a construct (which would mean that everything in it is also a construct, a concept that I prefer)? If it's "real", how does David cry? (he's not supposed to be physically capable of it) If it's not, why would Ben Kingsley Jelly Robot hang out with David on his bed instead of taking a more pleasing form, like Gigolo Joe, or even - well, heck, any Gigolo Joe is appreciated, so we'll say that. Oh well, whatever. Smoke another bowl.
* I figure the Jelly Babies took David's memories and responses, then restored his empty shell to its mint-in-box condition to fetch a higher price on the intergalactic collector's auction.
* Poor Teddy - people keep sticking their hand up his ass, trying to turn him on. It only works when it's Monica, though. Does that work for other cybernetic creatures? Naturally, Gigolo Joe comes to mind.
* David really should have taken Joe up on his offer to stay in Rouge City and be a superho sidekick. That would have been a very, very interesting sidetrack for the movie. What did Kubrick have in mind, anyway?
* Least favorite moment in the film (besides the ending voiceover of course) - yelling "Aaah!" as the carload of losers (and Joe) drive into Rouge City through the huge gaping mouth toll booths - I mean, Jesus, we're all already thinking about it, it's not like we need a huge kick in the tailbone to tell us to watch out for the Kinky Visuals.
Not a PG movie. At all. PG-13 would make more sense (didn't Spielberg do something like this before, and "Gremlins" was one of the films that made the PG-13 rating really necessary? Dickweed). An R would have been ideal. A nice, 3.5 hour R-rated extravaganza that cost about $10 million more and another eighteen months to make. Instead, we have this, and while it's easy to point out the things that it's NOT, it's much better in the end, I think, to appreciate it for what it is. Spielberg had better be glad he's doing a normal human movie next, because this is the kind of bizarre mess that ruins other directors' careers. Then again, Spielberg's a guaranteed cash cow, he's got more money than God, and he's the opposite of indie. He answers to no one.
Especially because Stanley Kubrick is dead.