reviewed by: Charity Bishop
     

It is in the genes of mankind a desire to create. Perhaps in our own way, we create to grasp some sense of the love that God has for his own creation. But when human intellect is taken too far, something like Artificial Intelligence is born with a darker realism, a cool and often cruel glimpse of a surreal future. Yes, it is a world with sci-fi cars, fantastic holograms, and realistic robots. But this isn't the world of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. And like young Haley Joel Osment's other films, it's definitely not for kids.

The film opens somewhere in the future in a world that has been melted under global warming. The earth's ice caps have submerged the major cities of the world, leaving only a few haunted buildings peering above the misty sea. In this future earth, space is limited and restrictions are placed on childbirth. Parents must earn the right to have children; the result is that thousands of human couples desire the right to raise children. With a ban on the human race, high-tech robots called mechas are swiftly becoming more popular. Mecha creator Professor Hobby has a solution to the pregnancy ban... to create a robot with the ability to form long lasting relationships... a child so realistic that he could be mistaken for a real boy. As a prototype, he is given to a family whose own son lies terminally ill, frozen until they can find a cure.

At first Monica cannot accept this "substitute" for her son Martin, but eventually we see her resolve begin to crumble. Her heart warms to this mechanical child and she takes the drastic step that cannot be reversed... she programs David for emotions, fully realizing the consequences... that she can never turn back the clock. This is a permanent arrangement, just as if he were flesh and blood. If she ever desires to go back on her promise, David must be returned to the factory and destroyed. For a time the boy is accepted and forms a strong bond with his new "mother," but then a cure is found for Monica's son Martin, whose return to the house causes emotional strife between the flesh and blood boy and the mecha. Unintentionally, his newly-programmed emotions fall prey to Martin's crooked sense of humor and irony and after a series of accidents where David nearly kills his brother, Monica is forced by her husband to return him to the factory. But unable to stomach the thought of what they will do to him there, she instead abandons him in the woods to find his own way. 

But the real world is not kind to mechas, and what follows is a horrific arrangement of circumstance that blend realism with a Pinocchio-style story for adults. David and his super-toy Teddy find themselves in the real world... a world in which "flesh peddlers" are determined to destroy the mechas, and engage in shockingly graphic and brutal tactics to dismantle, decapitate, melt and implode them for a cheering public in a Gladiator-style Holocaust. Hunted down and eventually captured along with his counterparts to be dispatched for show, David latches onto a lover-mecha called Joe (Jude Law) for protection. David, having been read the story of Pinocchio, believes that he can be a real boy if only he can find the Blue Fairy. But he may not live long enough to learn the difference between truth and fantasy...

Artificial Intelligence is many things, but the single word that often came to mind while I found myself in a dark mire of futuristic settings and inner turmoil was "disturbing." The ending closes on a somber note, and the film paces itself well for a time, but then begins to drag in the last half. There is only minor and much-needed comic relief on the part of Gigolo Joe, but even he can't lesson an intense an dark script. It tries to explain human frailties and instead exploits them. It deals with child abandonment and the emotional consequences that follow, suicide, prejudice and brings up some controversial religious issues. I probably represent a level half of the audience when I say that A.I. gave me a chilling feeling that something was terribly wrong with it on an emotional and spiritual level. Of course, coming from the pen of Stanley Kubrick, who could expect less?

The Biblical references to me were extremely controversial and often sarcastic or mocking. Joe says with a smirk at one point that he has solicited customers (for prostitution) outside of a church building. "They go in, they fold their hands and look around their feet, then they come home with me." At the flesh fair, the announcer opens the floor for abuse to mechas by using a slightly-altered piece of scripture: "He who is without 'sim' cast the first stone." God is also largely left out of the picture... where is He when the world is covered in the flood and then encased in ice? Where is He when all mankind is eventually wiped out? It's a film searching for some hope, but finds very little. Content-wise, this is on the high end of a 13 rating, not merely for sexual references and violence, but for dark thematic elements. Not to say the others aren't a problem -- many viewers will find images of realistically human mechas being demolished in public (shot through fans, melted with boiling lava, having their arms and legs pulled off) gruesome and horrific due to the fact that they look entirely human. Others, often with half-eaten away bodies, search through the trash for parts to replace those they've lost. At one point, a decapitated robot head flies toward David and the audience, only to glow eerily as it burns away into nothing. 

The worst part is that the perpetrators believe themselves in the right. It's kind of a space-age Holocaust with similar results. The only thing that saves David from becoming yet another example of boiling lava microchips is due to his childlike appearance. Viewers will also cringe when David looses his temper violently at one point, smashing the face of and decapitating his look-alike mecha. What follows is a sinister, eerie trip through the factory, where we see the hollow forms of more Davids. Undoubtedly Spielberg added the last half hour to allow the film not to end where I believed that it would -- in a very dark place. You might also object to a mecha made purely for sexual pleasure. Although nothing is actually seen, dialogue makes up for it. Our first introduction to Joe is made in a hotel room in which he soothes and flirts with a nervous young woman. The dialogue isn't overly graphic but everyone knows what they're talking about. The scene ends with him climbing on top of and kissing her. He often makes sexual references and persuades a carload of boys into driving them to Rouge by projecting an image of a mecha prostitute. This town is garnished with sexual imagery and signs.

At first I was intrigued by the film, but as it went on, growing progressively darker and darker, I realized that only a select number will enjoy this production; others will find it morally or emotionally degrading. It was a bomb at the box office, and it's not hard to see why. In our time and age, we don't want to see stories about the end of mankind. The fact of having humans as the bad guys isolates even more viewers who want to find humans... well, humane. Even with fantastically realistic special effects and Oscar-caliber performances, Artificial Intelligence isn't for the faint of heart. The truth is, we will always seek to create, but nothing that we can ever imagine could ever equal the value of God's ultimate creation... mankind.