Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence is in some ways so much richer and more interesting than anything you are likely to see in a multiplex this summer that it almost bugs me to express ambivalence about it. But the film’s ambitious exploration of the concepts of humanity is undermined by its lack of interest in specific humans, and by Spielberg’s attachment to sentimental convention.
A.I., is based on the short story ’’Supertoys Last All Summer Long, ’’ is set in a future beset by environmental collapse where lifelike robots called ’’mechas’’ are commonplace as workers and wealthy nations maintain their living standard by regulating pregnancy. The next logical step: A young couple whose terminally ill son has been cryogenically frozen accepts a surrogate-a prototype child-robot called David whose programming enables him not only to have a subconscious but also to love.
Whatever that means A.I. is most intriguing when it asks us to question what makes people people! David (Haley Joel Osment) pops from a lab acting like a puppet, unfailingly chipper and alert, a boy model of a model boy. Initially his behavior unnerves his parent/owners Monica and Henry Swinton; he even laughs like automation. But after Monica (Frances O’Connor) activates an imprinting program, David starts calling her mommy and gradually behaving more like a carbon based life form.
His progress is sidetracked when the Swinton’s own child is cured and returns home to compete for attention. David ends up abandoned and undertakes a quest-based on Pinocchio’s-to become a real boy. But while low keyed domestic science fiction drama gives way to nightmarish action, and then futuristic adventure, Spielburg continues to play provocatively with the idea of counterfeited humanity. The concept cuts both ways. David might be a ’’toy’’-he is counterpointed by his companion, a gruff, talking robotic teddy bear-but grief-driven Monica’s need to accept David as real bounces off his repeated question about each newly revealed facet of human interaction: ’’Is it a game?’’
Spielberg carves in high relief the question of whether robots can be human by showing how humans can be robotic. Perhaps not coincidentally, some of A.I.’s most compelling sequences focus on Gigolo Joe, who is one of the ’’lover robots’’ built to supplant human sex workers and who becomes David’s temporary guardian after he’s abandoned. Joe (Jude Law) is a circuitboarded Don Juan and on some level a parody of a swinger. He is light-footed and quick-witted-Law’s performance is beguiling-and his behavior is at once human and a scathing burlesque of human behavior.
The success of these aspects demonstrates Spielberg’s unquestioned chops and often underestimated thoughtfulness: Like the brilliant shipboard scenes in Amistad, they practically make you see ideas.
Yet all of A.I. doesn’t come into such sharp focus. Take the sequences immediately following David’s abandonment, when he’s confronted with a stumbling parade of damaged and discarded mechas. The outcasts dig through rubbish for their own replacement parts and then flee in robo terror from motorcycle riding huntsmen from Flesh Fair, an oddly named entertainment where functioning, sentient mechas are obliterated for human amusement.
The feel here is weird: Far from futuristic, the neon suited motorcyclists, bikes outfitted with snarling wolf-heads, resemble something out of a shlocky ’80s thriller. Meanwhile, the violently carnivalesque Flesh Flair atmosphere, which recalls a pro wrestling venue, is explained by human fear of being deceived and outnumbered by robot facsimiles. That the proles who make up the crowd might have legitimate gripes is ignored in favor of portraying them as yahoos hungry for pointless mayhem. Any comparison with well-off, stay at home mom Monica, who abandoned David to this fate, is deeply buried. On the other hand, the scene does get the film’s audience to question their belief in the ’bots’ personhood, and I must admit I could not take my eyes off it.
A.I. falls too short in terms of character development. O’Connor is a good actor, but Monica’s unresolved grief over her first son is more alluded to than explored, and her relationship to her husband is sketchy at best. And even at the supposed height of his humanity, David never feels substantial or singular enough to warrant status as a ’’real boy’’ he yearns to be. Meanwhile, Spielberg’s sentimentality sweetly poisons the film’s ’’When You Wish Upon A Star’’ conclusion.