Product Description: A highly advanced robotic boy longs to become real so that he can regain the love of his human mother. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 02/13/2007 Starring: Haley Joel Osment Jude Law Run time: 145 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Stephen Spielberg
Amazon.com: History will place an asterisk next to A.I. as the film Stanley Kubrick might have directed. But let the record also show that Kubrick--after developing this project for some 15 years--wanted Steven Spielberg to helm this astonishing sci-fi rendition of Pinocchio, claiming (with good reason) that it veered closer to Spielberg's kinder, gentler sensibilities. Spielberg inherited the project (based on the Brian Aldiss short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long") after Kubrick's death in 1999, and the result is an astounding directorial hybrid. A flawed masterpiece of sorts, in which Spielberg's gift for wondrous enchantment often clashes (and sometimes melds) with Kubrick's harsher vision of humanity, the film spans near and distant futures with the fairy-tale adventures of an artificial boy named David (Haley Joel Osment), a marvel of cybernetic progress who wants only to be a real boy, loved by his mother in that happy place called home.
Echoes of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun are clearly heard as young David, shunned by his trial parents and tossed into an unfriendly world, is joined by fellow "mecha" Gigolo Joe (played with a dancer's agility by Jude Law) in his quest for a mother-and-child reunion. Parallels to Pinocchio intensify as David reaches "the end of the world" (a Manhattan flooded by melted polar ice caps), and a far-future epilogue propels A.I. into even deeper realms of wonder, even as it pulls Spielberg back to his comfort zone of sweetness and soothing sentiment. Some may lament the diffusion of Kubrick's original vision, but this is Spielberg's A.I. (complete with one of John Williams's finest scores), a film of astonishing technical wizardry that spans the spectrum of human emotions and offers just enough Kubrick to suggest that humanity's future is anything but guaranteed. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - A great fairy tale - except robots and good special effects.
I love this movie...it tells a great story.
I like the fact that it is a quiet movie that speaks more on a personal level than just action and blowing things up. A good drama.
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Rating: - Moving
The story is completely unfeasible, but is still a good one and very moving in parts.
The artificial child David is created to have human emotion, in particular the ability to love. But it ... Read More
Rating: - One of the best... ever
This movie was supposed to be done by Stanley Kubrick but he died before it was complete. As a Kubrick film, one should know what to expect, but add in Steven Spielberg and the effect is warmer and still ... Read More
Rating: - Makes me cry - 1 of my favorites
This movie makes me cry. I watch it every so often for catharsis (Titanic and Amelie and Shawshank Redemption does the same). One of my favorites. It speaks to me on so many levels. It is very surreal too, ... Read More
Rating: - Bleccchhh!
It would be difficult to suggest a director less-suited to the handling of Kubrick's work than Spielberg. Kubrick is cerebral, passionate, hallucinatory... Spielberg is prosaic, predictable, traditional. Kubrick ... Read More
- A great fairy tale - except robots and good special effects.
- Moving
- Bleccchhh!