Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg

I wanted to review a book today but I have just finished watching this one for the very first time and I thought I might review it here.

The film is based upon a short story by Brian Aldiss. Now, I have not read the short story so I don't know if it has the same characters or not, that's why I'll stick to the film.

 

The film is set in a very interesting future: global warming has somewhat destroyed the planet and the cities that defined mankind are gone. Robots are becoming more and more authentic and the creators want to go one step further. They decide that the next robot that will be created should be one capable of loving, and the only way to achieve that is a child robot who could feel love for those he would consider his or her parents. 

The handicap to these robots will be that if rejected, they will be destroyed because their love will be real and will not be reconfigurable.

Sometime later, a child robot, David, arrives in a devastated family that is about to lose their real son. David becomes like a second son and develops real love for the mother, who he believes to be his own. It all changes when the real son comes back and puts David in different situations that end up with poor David abandoned with a robot teddy bear, rather than destroyed.

David has a dream: he will find the blue fairy and will ask her to make him a real boy, just like Pinocchio. From the moment he is left all in his own, he begins a journey to find her, to become a real kid and go back to his beloved mother.

 It is indeed a great story, I was so in love with it by this point that I had not realized that almost an hour and a half had gone by. There are great characters from beginning to end in the film, David being the most interesting. Jude Law is in it too and plays a robot Gigolo, which was so unexpected that it was genius. Great characters, great story, great writing, real feelings (which obviously is a big deal in the film), and great aspirations.

I really do not want to spoil what happens from the moment David and Joe (Jude Law) meet so I'll stop here. 

*SPOILER ALERT*

The one thing that to me killed the film was its final part. There is a clear, amazing even, ending to the story, and it is even beautifully narrated with a voice over. But for some reason the film goes on for another 25 minutes (with Aliens in it!). That part did not make much sense to me, and as I said it pretty much killed the magic of the entire story… But, aside from that, I can easily pretend that the film ends where I think it should end, and I'll love it and probably re-watch it.

MadHatterSays: Watch it!

                               3.5/5