Summary
A robotic boy who's programmed to love navigates a futuristic landscape trying to find a person who he believes can make him real.
My Thoughts
There are many moments of this film that are extraordinarily remarkable and other moments in this movie that fall flat. It’s not a perfect film by any means, but it is a unique and enjoyable journey. There are a few bizarre but brilliant moments in this film that you wont find anywhere else, and it emotes a sense of whimsy and wonder while still somehow finding a way to maintain a dark undertones; I would certainly call this one of Spielberg’s more existential films. This was, of course, meant to be one of Stanley Kubrick’s last films, but when it became apparent Kubrick wouldn’t live long enough see the film come to screen, he passed it off to Spielberg. There are many things about this movie that scream Kubrick, but some that also scream Spielberg, and as a result the film feels like it’s full of multiple ideologies on what the film should look like. It comes out lukewarm instead of boiling hot. It is a good movie, but I doubt it’s what Kubrick or Spielberg wholly envisioned.
(SOME SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING PARARGAPH)
The film opens with Professor Hobby (William Hurt, ”Dark City”) as he speaks to a number of students about the idea of creating a robot that can love emotionally. We flash forward a short time and are introduced to the Swintons, who have just put their son, Martin (Jake Thomas, “Lizzie McGuire”) in cryostasis until a cure is found for the disease he has. Monica (Frances O’Connor, “The Conjuring 2”), the mother, is distraught, so Henry, Martin’s father and a Cybertronics employee, signs up to be part of a test group for the company’s latest robot: David (Haley Joel Osment, “The Sixth Sense”). At first, David struggles to make a connection with Monica, but after a few misunderstandings the two seem to hit it off. Eventually, however, Martin is cured of his disease and returns home. Martin and David do not get along, but for a while they try to make it work. One night, Monica reads the boys Pinocchio, and David becomes obsessed with the idea of finding a ‘blue fairy,’ the creature that transforms Pinocchio into a living thing. But, after a series of escalating tiffs between the David and Martin, Monika realizes that she can’t keep both of them, so she drives David to the woods and tells him that he has to stay there. David, in an effort to win back his mother’s love, sets off across the sci-fi landscape to find the blue fairy so that he might become real. An animatronic teddy bear and a male prostitute robot named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law, “eXistenZ”) accompany him on his journey.
(END OF SPOILERS)
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this movie are it’s world building and the themes. I knew very little about this movie going into it, (obviously I knew it was about robots, but that was about it) and honestly, I’m glad that I saw it that way, because the way the movie unfolds is rather remarkable. It starts small; most of the first act is spent indoors with David at the Swintons’s home. But as the story progresses and David leaves the Swintons’s, we are slowly shown the depth of this world. Jude Law as Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute recently framed for murder, becomes David’s guide through the hellish country gladiator rings and hedonistic cities; together they trek across the country towards the flooded coast cities (the world is in a quasi-post-apocalyptic state due to climate change). There’s so much going on in this movie both in the background and foreground, and it’s rare that Spielberg ever spells out exactly what’s happening. The rules of the world are not laid out: he shows us the world and expects us to piece it together, much like the way David learns. The way the world is revealed to us keeps us interested and on our toes: honestly, you can’t really call what’s going to happen next (How often do you get epic stories about robot boys traveling with Gigolo robots and animatronic teddy bears?)
I believe theme was something they really strove for here, and in some aspects they did a really good job, in others, I feel like I was a bit hazy on what they were going for. The main theme here, I believe, draws a lot of comparisons to the story of creation. God creates man, gives him love, gives him instruction, and then leaves him alone, and, some people would say, feeling a sense of abandonment, searching for something that will make him whole (Jesus’s redemption). This story mirrors that journey: man creates robots, robot learns and adapts to what man wants, but man leaves the robot anyways, and feeling that sense of abandonment, the robot goes off in search of something which he believes will make him whole and unique: the blue fairy. This theme of searching for meaning permeates throughout the film, and I believe it works incredibly well, but some of the other character’s themes and meanings for their side stories sort of fall by the wayside as we progress. This is a big movie, and a lot happens, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that some of the storylines aren’t wrapped up as well as others. Throughout my viewing, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between this and “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), which covers many of the same themes, but, in my opinion, the “Blade Runner” series does it a little better.
Towards the end there are some very dated special effects. I read a little about the film after my viewing and learned that Spielberg said some of the visual effects took a backseat as he was gearing up to film “Minority Report” (2002) at the same time. That’s too bad, because this film was certainly deserved a little more attention at the end.
Verdict
This is a Spielberg film that isn’t really talked about as much as some of his others, and I can see why. It’s incredibly ambitious and it succeeds on many levels, but doesn’t quite succeed on others. It has some great moments and some strange and unique ideas that really make the film worth watching at least once, but I don’t think it accomplishes everything it meant to. This movie feels like a meandering dream meant to make the viewer reflect on his or her own life, and it does prompt some reflection, but what exactly the viewer is meant to glean from that reflection is left rather ambiguous. I did enjoy this movie, but I felt like it could’ve been more; in a way, I felt towards the movie the way David felt about his unsatisfactory life.
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