***** SPOILERS WITHIN ********
Let me start my review with a question: are those "beings" at the very end of the movie supposed to be aliens or advanced AIs? From things I've read and people I've talked to, the second answer appears to be the consensus - but I'll be damned if I thought the point was driven home in any meaningful way. I bring this issue up first because I find the confusion symptomatic of the entire movie: "driving home a point in any meaningful way" is not something this film is particularly good at.
To start with the positives, though: the visuals, I thought, were quite trippy and memorable - and Spielberg did a fine job of balancing his own style with Kubrickian trademarks, and thereby achieving a kind of third type of thing in the end. At least, he did in the first section (David and the parents at home) and the incredible last section (New York submerged under the melted ice caps). But I thought the middle section - the punk apocalypse of the Flesh Fair and Rouge City - was actually pretty tawdry and underwhelming. It tried to beat "Blade Runner" and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" at their own game and it just looked shoddy and derivative.
That whole middle section of the movie, anyway, was pretty much a waste. . .. . . . And I say that because, for me at least, whatever interest to be found in the film is either in that first section (i.e. the psychology of a human family learning to live with, and eventually love, an AI) or in the very last - with the notion of a world which has been completely taken over by automatons (or, as they're called in the film, "mechas"). Focusing the story on either one of those two tangents would have been worthwhile. What the film *did* choose to focus on - David's search for the Blue Fairy and his desire to become "a real, live boy" - was remarkably simple-minded and reductionist. Ultimately, I just didn't CARE about David, because his quest was stupid and ill-fated from the very beginning. Nor did I think it was smart to set up a "mecha" as our tragic hero: since I am after all a human being, I am much more interested in the reaction of human beings in an increasingly mechanized and roboticized society. Leave it to cold as ice Stanley, though, to prefer following a robot around than a human being. But then leave it to the sentimental Spielberg to try to humanize that robot, leaving him as an annoying hybrid. What I mean to say is that, if Kubrick had lived to direct the film, while it may not necessarily have been any better, I think he would have had the good sense to keep David eerily "robotic" at all times - whereas Spielberg couldn't resist the temptation to make Haley Joel Osment emote and carry on like a real live boy. And thereby muddling the theme ("ya see, Steven, he *wants* to be a real boy, he's not supposed to already *be* one").
In those moments - mainly early on - when little Haley is permitted to fully be an android, he is dead on and extremely chilling. What he was called upon to do was quite subtle and complex - to totally subsume his humanity, and yet to inhabit a being which longs for and apes that very humanity. This kid is not just a great "child actor" - he's a great actor, period. (As for Jude Law, the other major actor here - he was great and hugely entertaining in his role as a "gigolo" AI, but his character seemed more of a contrivance and an afterthought than anything else.)
As to that ending, with the mechas/aliens: I must admit, I didn't even so much as *entertain* the notion that they were AIs until I read a comment someone made about the movie online. The fact is, if they're supposed to be "mechas", that really raises a lot more questions than it answers. Such as, well what happened to all the humans, then? Also, when did AIs become sophisticated enough to be able to run an entire society without input or instructions from their makers? Surely, none of the AIs we see during the course of the movie is anywhere near that self-reliant (both David and Gigolo Joe are dependent upon, and serve at the whims of, others). Finally, why would these advanced robots be so interested in finding out about mankind? Presumably, they're far more perfect and efficient than we could ever be, and anyway they're only running at all because they already have human programming built into them somehow. My point here is this: if the movie is indeed positing an eventual all-mecha society, then it is being lazy and disingenuous in the extreme to only mention it as an afterthought, a footnote to its otherwise "Pinnochio"-lite movie (by the way, didn't all that direct quoting of "Pinnochio" get on your nerves - it's like Stanley and Steve were worried that we wouldn't get the reference or something). If an all-AI world is in the cards - then, dammit, that's a WHOLE *OTHER* MOVIE!! (and one I'd prefer to see)
Obviously, any way you slice it, that ending opens things up for much more speculation than the filmmakers allowed themselves to engage in. Certainly, you can make the valid point that one can't criticize a movie simply because it wasn't the one YOU would have made. But, really, I'm puzzled as to what Stan and Steve thought the point was of their movie as they conceived it. What - that robots are people, too? Umm. . . they're not, guys. Whether they're something *more* or something *less* is a question worth examining, and a good subject for a rigorous and inquisitive film. "A.I." isn't it.
Let me start my review with a question: are those "beings" at the very end of the movie supposed to be aliens or advanced AIs? From things I've read and people I've talked to, the second answer appears to be the consensus - but I'll be damned if I thought the point was driven home in any meaningful way. I bring this issue up first because I find the confusion symptomatic of the entire movie: "driving home a point in any meaningful way" is not something this film is particularly good at.
To start with the positives, though: the visuals, I thought, were quite trippy and memorable - and Spielberg did a fine job of balancing his own style with Kubrickian trademarks, and thereby achieving a kind of third type of thing in the end. At least, he did in the first section (David and the parents at home) and the incredible last section (New York submerged under the melted ice caps). But I thought the middle section - the punk apocalypse of the Flesh Fair and Rouge City - was actually pretty tawdry and underwhelming. It tried to beat "Blade Runner" and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" at their own game and it just looked shoddy and derivative.
That whole middle section of the movie, anyway, was pretty much a waste. . .. . . . And I say that because, for me at least, whatever interest to be found in the film is either in that first section (i.e. the psychology of a human family learning to live with, and eventually love, an AI) or in the very last - with the notion of a world which has been completely taken over by automatons (or, as they're called in the film, "mechas"). Focusing the story on either one of those two tangents would have been worthwhile. What the film *did* choose to focus on - David's search for the Blue Fairy and his desire to become "a real, live boy" - was remarkably simple-minded and reductionist. Ultimately, I just didn't CARE about David, because his quest was stupid and ill-fated from the very beginning. Nor did I think it was smart to set up a "mecha" as our tragic hero: since I am after all a human being, I am much more interested in the reaction of human beings in an increasingly mechanized and roboticized society. Leave it to cold as ice Stanley, though, to prefer following a robot around than a human being. But then leave it to the sentimental Spielberg to try to humanize that robot, leaving him as an annoying hybrid. What I mean to say is that, if Kubrick had lived to direct the film, while it may not necessarily have been any better, I think he would have had the good sense to keep David eerily "robotic" at all times - whereas Spielberg couldn't resist the temptation to make Haley Joel Osment emote and carry on like a real live boy. And thereby muddling the theme ("ya see, Steven, he *wants* to be a real boy, he's not supposed to already *be* one").
In those moments - mainly early on - when little Haley is permitted to fully be an android, he is dead on and extremely chilling. What he was called upon to do was quite subtle and complex - to totally subsume his humanity, and yet to inhabit a being which longs for and apes that very humanity. This kid is not just a great "child actor" - he's a great actor, period. (As for Jude Law, the other major actor here - he was great and hugely entertaining in his role as a "gigolo" AI, but his character seemed more of a contrivance and an afterthought than anything else.)
As to that ending, with the mechas/aliens: I must admit, I didn't even so much as *entertain* the notion that they were AIs until I read a comment someone made about the movie online. The fact is, if they're supposed to be "mechas", that really raises a lot more questions than it answers. Such as, well what happened to all the humans, then? Also, when did AIs become sophisticated enough to be able to run an entire society without input or instructions from their makers? Surely, none of the AIs we see during the course of the movie is anywhere near that self-reliant (both David and Gigolo Joe are dependent upon, and serve at the whims of, others). Finally, why would these advanced robots be so interested in finding out about mankind? Presumably, they're far more perfect and efficient than we could ever be, and anyway they're only running at all because they already have human programming built into them somehow. My point here is this: if the movie is indeed positing an eventual all-mecha society, then it is being lazy and disingenuous in the extreme to only mention it as an afterthought, a footnote to its otherwise "Pinnochio"-lite movie (by the way, didn't all that direct quoting of "Pinnochio" get on your nerves - it's like Stanley and Steve were worried that we wouldn't get the reference or something). If an all-AI world is in the cards - then, dammit, that's a WHOLE *OTHER* MOVIE!! (and one I'd prefer to see)
Obviously, any way you slice it, that ending opens things up for much more speculation than the filmmakers allowed themselves to engage in. Certainly, you can make the valid point that one can't criticize a movie simply because it wasn't the one YOU would have made. But, really, I'm puzzled as to what Stan and Steve thought the point was of their movie as they conceived it. What - that robots are people, too? Umm. . . they're not, guys. Whether they're something *more* or something *less* is a question worth examining, and a good subject for a rigorous and inquisitive film. "A.I." isn't it.