Listen To Me

A.I.
Spoiler-Filled Review By: Ross

The original conceptualist of A.I. was Stanley Kubrick, or however the hell you spell his last name. He had plans for this movie eleven years ago, but due to either laziness, money, or as he claimed "The special effects weren't advanced enough" the movie never got produced. After he made the movie Sex, Sex, and More Sex, I mean Eyes Wide Shut, he planned on producing and directing A.I... But what's this? UH OH! It seems Old Stan is pushing up daisies. So Steven Spielberg decides to make it, seeing as he talked a lot about it with Stan. Now everybody thinks it's gonna suck because the original person didn't make it. Or something. Anyway, Spielberg makes it and it's in theaters and I saw it and you're gonna read my review.

Now, unlike The Animal, I'm actually writing this the day I saw it so I'll remember it. The movie opens with a shot of the ocean, with a narration of what has transpired over the last 200 or something years (sea levels have risen and the coastal cities have gone kerplunk). It cuts to a bunch of old people in suits talking in some sort of library about Artificial Intelligence. Then the main guy stabs some girl in the hand with a pin, and it turns out she's really a robot. Then they go into some shit about how robots can't actually feel emotions, and their purpose is to make a robot boy who can love. So then it goes to some people in a cryogenics lab, and they're looking at their son who is in a coma. The lady reads to him and stuff. Then some more stuff happens, and eventually the dad brings home a robot (or 'mecha') boy who just walks around and does stuff for 15 minutes. Then the dad explains to the mom that if she does some stuff and says some words, the robot will be imprinted on her and love her. She goes through some moral dilemmas and eventually does and says the stuff.

Now, a la his complex programming, the boy will love the mother for all eternity. So then stuff happens and the mom gives the robot a toy bear, which is also intelligent. That is one spiffy bear, I'll tell you. Conveniently, their other son wakes up. Oh ho. So he comes home and sees David (that's the robot's name, by the way) as some kind of toy. He wants to get David in trouble, so he tells him that if he cuts a lock of his Mom's hair while she's sleeping she'll love him more. He tries to go do this, and predictably they think he was trying to kill her. They find out that he really wasn't later on and talk about it while they're setting up for the other kid's (Martin or Henry, I forget) birthday. So they're at the pool, and all the other kids gather around David to look at him. Now this one fat kid wants to see if David can feel pain, and says "Duh, I'm going to stab you in the arm and you tell me if it hurts ok?" So he does it, and before he does any real damage David gets scared and grabs onto the other kid, henceforth known as Menry since I can't remember if it's Henry or Martin. Well he backs into the pool, and since David doesn't need to breath he doesn't go back to the surface or let go. The adults rescue Menry (or was it Hartin?) and leave David at the bottom of the pool.

Now the parents don't want anybody drowning or getting stabbed with scissors or imploding because of the robot boy, so they decide to take him back. Now for some ludicrous reason the manufacturers made it so the imprint is permanent, so they'll have to destroy him if he's taken back. So she takes him to the plant place where he was made to be destroyed. But mommy loves her boy! So instead of going there she drops him and they go into some nearby woods where she tells David that she has to leave him, and to go any way but towards the factory. This is actually a very emotional scene, and I'm not going to make fun of it because it is very heart-wrenching. If I were a woman I probably would have cried.

Now it cuts to a hotel room with a sharp dressed man and an average looking woman. It turns out that the man is actually a mecha designed to pleasure people (yes, that way). So that's what he does. Yeah. We find out his name is Joe. So he goes into another woman's room, but finds out she's dead. Then her lover comes in (Who is actually Elliot from Just Shoot Me) and confesses that he killed her. Joe gets blamed though, so he runs into the woods. Now it goes back to David and Teddy (the bear) wandering through the woods. They see a truck, which dumps a bunch of old robot parts. Understandably, David is horrified. Then, a bunch of other robots come and pick through the junk and fuse the parts with their bodies. That right there is a little disturbing, kind of like the thing in the first Toy Story where Woody is in Sid's house. Joe shows up and mingles with the other robots now. Then for some reason, a giant hot air balloon that looks EXACTLY like the moon comes over the horizon and all the robots run. David, Teddy, and Joe all end up holding on to each other, as they have a net thrown over them by guys on weird motorcycles. The net is hauled up to the balloon and Joe and David are taken up, but Teddy falls to the ground. They are taken to a 'Flesh Fest', where stray robots are destroyed for human entertainment. One of the female robots who helped David is destroyed by having acid poured on her. Also very disturbing. Now Teddy followed the balloon and ends up the stadium's lost and found. He crawls out and finds David, and a little girl sees the bear. She also see's David and thinks he's real, but her dad (Who sort of runs the show) figures out he's not. He's still a little hesitant about killing him though. Anyway, a fat guy makes him die. So it's him and Joe's turn to be killed. Some stuff happens and the audience starts rioting because he's a little boy. Joe, David, and Teddy escape.

I'm getting tired of typing so I'll summarize the next part shortly because it's not too important. They go to Rogue City and ask a computer program that supposedly knows everything where the Blue Fairy is. I had better explain that because I completely neglected that part. In the beginning, they read David Snow White, and from then on David thinks if he can find the Blue Fairy and become a real boy, his mom will love him. So they deduce that they need to get to Manhattan, and find some crying lions or something. The police find Joe and they steal a police helicopter, then fly to Manhattan which is now a ruined city because half of it is underwater. They see some crying lions (or something) and land in that building. David goes in and sees another David exactly like him, and goes insane and smacks his head off with a lamp. Now this professor guy who apparently made him, comes and tells David how much of a success he is and that the team would like to meet him. So he leaves. David wanders around the office, and comes to the library thing that was shown at the beginning of the movie. Except one difference. There are dozens of lifeless, expressionless Davids hanging on the walls. It's actually very unsettling. He then sees the logo of the company that his mom told him not to go towards, so he climbs out the window and sits on the ledge. Joe is hovering from the helicopter watching. Then David falls off the building (on purpose) and into the water. Now at this point I thought "Whoa, that's a great ending. Really makes you think."

So overall I thought this movie was pretty good. It examined all the fundamental ills of society and NO. You'd think that wouldn't you? But the movie's not over yet, children. It shows David floating in the water, then some fish swim around, then he sinks. Then a claw comes out and drags him out of the water. IT IS JOE! Turns out this spiffy little chopper can go underwater too. David explains how he saw the Blue Fairy and needs to go back down. BUT OH NO there is another Police helicopter that has a magical magnet or something and it starts to pull Joe up. Joe says goodbye and hits the submerge button on the chopper thing. So David goes down. He maneuvers through the sunken Coney Island to the Pinocchio display and finds the Blue Fairy. He stops the chopper in front of her and starts to ask her to make him a real boy. The ferris wheel breaks and falls on top of his chopper, and one of the beams hits straight on the cockpit with David and Teddy inside.

This was actually a very well done movie. The complexity of the SHIT! It's not over? Dammit! Ok. Now Teddy says something about how they're ok, and David keeps praying. The narrator says that he kept praying until his mouth mechanism atrophied, as did his joints. But his eyes were still open, and he could still see the Blue Fairy even after the lights on his copter dimmed. And so he prayed...

*Applause* One of the things I really liked about this movie was that WHAT THE HELL?! There's more? Yep, There's more. Now it fast forwards 2000 years, and everything is frozen. There are vehicles in the sky and weird looking creatures excavating the ice that I thought at first were aliens. One vehicle in particular goes down to the place where David and his chopper is, and reactivates him. He walks up to the Blue Fairy and she crumbles into pieces.

It turns out these strange beings are actually robots, and there are no more humans around.They go through David's memory and create a house exactly like his. He is happy to be home. After all that crap that fooled me into thinking the movie was over, I thought this was good. It would have been good even without the other crap too. There's one problem though. IT'S NOT THE END.

David wants his Mom. But the robot people can't bring her back without a DNA sample. Well good old Teddy happens to have the hair from when David cut it from his mom. So they make her from that. But for some reason she will only live for one day, but David has fun with her anyway. Her husband and kid aren't there, just the two of them. So she is about to go to sleep, and David tucks her in and gets in the bed with her.

THE END

No, it really is the end this time. Besides the last 30 minutes, this movie was great. The only problem (besides the ending) was that people are way too stupid to understand this. There were about 3 points in this movie where it was supposed to be funny. The audience laughed about 20 times. They were laughing at things that weren't even remotely funny, and they weren't laughing at the things that were. That's usually how it goes in a serious movie anyway. One thing that the writer people did very well was create the part of the bear. It could have easily been the comic relief, cracking jokes every 30 seconds to put a little levity in the movie. But this is a serious movie, and putting something like that in would have completely screwed it up.

God damn I wrote too much. And I spoiled this whole thing by being serious about it. There just wasn't much to make fun of here, I guess. So was it worth my $7.50? Probably. Except for the fact that the theater was so cramped that I had to sit in between two fat ladies, and the one on the right kept farting (I am not kidding) and spilling her butter-laden popcorn all over my arm. I also put my hand in something sticky on the railing on the way out. It smelled like apples.


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