The results, then, are just as audiences would expect: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is Kubrick as interpreted by Spielberg, which means it's by turns poignant and cold, twisted and sweet, dreamy and drab, effortless and overwrought. In short the movie is a stunning, ambitious mess that leaves a viewer wondering how much better it might have been without Kubrick's specter peering over Spielberg's heavy shoulders. But what else could it have been? Theirs is hardly a perfect marriage: Kubrick's movies are chilly and distant, existential tone poems made by a control freak who loved movies but not necessarily the people who paid to watch them. His perfectionism too often quashed whatever passion sneaked into his films -- they look great but feel empty. Spielberg, especially the young man who made Close Encounters and E.T., revels in innocence and awe. Spielberg, the eternal optimist, presents life as one big happy ending: We're going to be rescued, whether by aliens or Roy Scheider or Tom Hanks. Kubrick, the curmudgeonly cynic, seemed to believe we are all doomed. One walks out of his movies filled with hope only because he or she hopes the world isn't as bad off as the director's work suggests.
A.I. attempts to reconcile those disparate world views. The movie wants to overwhelm its audience with sadness and despair, but it's too frosty and manipulative to elicit a single tear. Spielberg is credited with A.I.'s screenplay -- it's the first time he's done such double duty since Close Encounters -- but the film is faithful to both Aldiss's story and Ian Watson's original screen story, commissioned by Kubrick. Watching it, a moviegoer can't help but feel that the director wanted to become Kubrick, which means this is the first Spielberg movie that seems to have one hand on the viewer's chest, keeping him or her at bay.
A.I. fleshes out, for lack of a better phrase, Aldiss's simple, heartbreaking short story into a grand-scale fairy tale -- Pinocchio as reimagined by the visual-effects team at Industrial Light & Magic. The film's onset reveals that the polar ice caps have melted and drowned Earth's biggest cities, and in a distant, overpopulated future in which childbirth is regulated by the proper authorities, humanoid robots have taken over our most menial chores; they serve us, even pleasure us, until they're discarded for better models. Professor Hobby (William Hurt), A.I.'s Geppetto, proposes to a group of fellow robotic designers that they create a "robot who can love," and the result is little David (Haley Joel Osment), who is made of synthetic flesh and computer circuitry. Hobby is unprepared to answer the inevitable Big Question: Can you get a human to love the robot back?
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The response is found in the home of Monica and Henry Swinton (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards), whose flesh-and-blood son, Martin (Jake Thomas), suffers an illness that requires that he be suspended in cryogenic deep-freeze. His holding tank is in but one of myriad scenes that look like something lifted from 2001; the audience, like Martin, shivers in the sterile setting. Henry, who works for Professor Hobby, envisions David as Martin's replacement, but Monica refuses to look at his unblinking, expressionless face -- a machine bereft of true emotion but prone to disturbing outbursts of laughter. Monica finally warms to the cold little boy, imprinting him with seven words that will forever bond mother and "child," and as she does so, his face softens. (Osment looks, on occasion, like Cary Guffey, the child in Close Encounters who longs to ride in the crystal chandelier in the sky.) The catch is that David can love only her, and if Monica ever decides she no longer wants David, he will have to be destroyed.
