Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, William Hurt
Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Many people bandy about the word 'visionary' any chance they get. Many have used it to describe the new Steven Spielberg movie, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I promise not to use the word 'visionary' to describe this film, because that word is no played by now.

This visionary movie comes about from the teamwork of the late filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and Spielberg and obviously something had to give when these two giant came together. The result is a very weird movie. In my estimation, there are two categories of weird films: good-weird and bad-weird. This movie is good-weird.

The futuristic, sci-fi movie is told in three overly long parts. The first has a family adopt a prototype robot child to replace their real child, who is now in cryogenic stasis, until a cure to his disease can be found. The robot child, named David (played by Haley Joel Osment), creeps out the family at first, but then they begin to accept him as he learns about family interactions and emotions. However, after things go wrong, his 'mother' is forced to abandon him in the forest. David thinks it's due to her not loving him, because he is not a real boy. And just like in that 'Pinocchio' story he read, he sets out to find the Blue Fairy, to magically transform him into an 'orga' (short for organic) boy. Thus begins part two of the film. David meets up with another 'mecha' (short for mechanical), named Gigolo Joe (played by Jude Law). They pair up in search of the Blue Fairy and ultimately stumble into part three, which is where this movie gets weird.

While part one is relatively happy, and well-lit, part two gets very gritty. David and Joe go through a Blade Runner-esque world where the skies are perpetually dark and rainy and mechas are hunted and destroyed in front of WWF-like audiences for entertainment. Then, part three is equal parts Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The ending is much like that of 2001, in that I'm still not sure what happened�in either.

I don't care what people say about Osment, but the kid can act. And act well. He is very believable as an outsider when he is seen absorbing the world around him, trying to learn the motions and actions of human. As for Law, he steals the movie whenever he is on screen. As a charismatic, pleasure mecha, his every move is calculated to exude style and cool, from his gliding walk to going through turnstiles. I say he should get some serious hardware for his role.

A.I. is real science fiction. While this movie has the best visual effect I have ever seen, A.I. its focus in not about the effects. It is about what will we do when we create machine that have the ability to understand human emotions. We gets load of "sci-fi" on TV and the movies. For every two 'Voyagers', there is a Blade Runner. For every three 'SG-1s', there is a 2001. And for every four 'Wing Commanders', there is an A.I. Real science fiction shows how actions and technology today can lead to exaggerated problems in the future. By that criteria, A.I. is an excellent science fiction movie, albeit a rather odd one. But that's what happens when two giants of creativity come together for a project.

DroopyMcC
Queen

MastaCSG		Disturbing, sad, scary, bleak... I liked it.
King

ASY		An interesting movie, but not as visionary as some are lead to believe. Standard science fiction fare.
Jack