Rating- * * (2/5)
As much as I enjoyed this movie, I must reluctantly give it a “thumbs down”. It is important that you know the back story of this movie in order to understand where it went wrong. A.I. was a screenplay based on a science-fiction short story called “Supertoys Last All Summer Long.” It is widely regarded as one of the most stunning and insightful pieces about the ethics of creating artificial life. It was picked up by the legendary director Stanley Kubrick in the final days of his life and it was to be his final project. Unfortunately, Kubrick died just before the release of Eyes Wide Shut, an unfitting and uncharacteristic finale for the great artist that brought us some of the greatest films of all time, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Dr. Strangelove. Shortly after the director’s death, Steven Spielberg revealed that Kubrick had discussed his plans for his final film in his dying days and had asked Spielberg to complete the film. It was to be one of the greatest collaborations in film history. The problem was that the greater of the two filmmakers would have no creative input and the bulk of the work would be left to Spielberg. Don’t get me wrong, Spielberg is a great director; it’s just that deep, artistic films like Kubrick’s are not his forte. Spielberg is better at very surface level, easy to digest, visually impressive movies. Somewhere between Stanley Kubrick’s notes and Steven Spielberg’s finished product lies a truly great film; but ultimately, this movie doesn’t work. The movie’s subject matter is very dark and sad and the visual style reflects this well. The cities are sleazy, dark, and wet. The humans are cruel and insensitive, while the robots are innocent and almost sympathetic. We feel for the robots and not the humans in this movie, as was intended. However, at the crucial moment of truth, Spielberg seems to lack the courage to end the movie the way Kubrick certainly would have. This film flirts with greatness, and certainly has enough potential for three movies, but ultimately fails because rather than having the best of both worlds, it brings the best of neither. It lacks the immediate, obvious enjoyability of a Spielberg movie, but has no truth or humanity to compensate like a Kubrick film would. It’s easy to see why the average moviegoer would not enjoy this movie, but if you’re a film buff and you can appreciate certain qualities of great film without them all being there, you would probably get something out of this. This is one of those tragic movies that could be so great in the right hands but was fumbled and lost through mismanagement. I want to love this movie, but I just can't.